Zona

I love baseball!!!!

I love to cover my face with a new baseball glove and inhale deep. I love to rub a new baseball under my nose and inhale deep.

I love that I can tell you that I saw Willie Mays play.

Baseball starts in the spring when everything else wonderful seems to be starting. The boys are back and the grass is green. The sound of the balls hitting gloves and bats is a sweet as any cricket in the tranquil night meadows.

I haven't been to Tucson during spring training in many years and I lament each year. I really need to go. I was Giants fan for years and now I just sit back and watch'em all play. I was at a game when Bruce Hurst hit Kevin Mitchell with a pitch and as Kevin charged the mound I was instantly on my feet yelling, "kick his ass Kevin".

You don't even know who those guys were, where the game was, or what two teams were involved. It doesn't matter.

I was watching the game just now and they showed a player's perfect swing in super slow motion. You see the ball come in to the frame. You see the bat make contact with the ball. You see the flowing follow through of the swing. The next guy to touch that ball was in the right field bleachers. The swing was an art form. A technique as fine as anything Nijinsky did.

Same game, they showed a guy throwing 100 mile an hour fast balls throw a curve ball that froze the hitter and the ump through his arm up to call the guy out strike three. I yelled, really yelled, WHOA!! when I saw it and it was LOUD and I was watching on a TV over a thousand miles away. The hitter was stunned frozen by the curve ball. He might as well just heard that his girlfriend was dumping him for his sister. I think the look on his face would have been the same.

Joe Carter hit a home run that won the World Series a few years ago and was prancing around the bases like a six year-old. I was watching in my living room and balling like a baby and I wasn't a Toronto fan. I was a baseball fan watching every kid's dream come true through Joe Carter.

I cry at no hitters. I honor Robinson and Clemente. I know that Hank Aaron was the greatest hitter of all time and that Nolan Ryan was the greatest pitcher of all time and what makes that better is that they are both great men.

I watch guys half my age play the game today and I feel like the kid. They're still heroes which is why I know that with the game on the line I would want Jeter at the plate or Smoltz on the mound.

Baseball ends as winter starts and everything wonderful seems to end with it. Then my soul gets quiet until the spring when pitchers and catchers report for training.

I'm gonna be there next year damnit.