An Old Cardinal Hayes Cardinal named George Carlin said it, brilliantly, years ago: “Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog …”¨ in baseball, if it rains, we don’t go out to play.” And: “Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. ”¨Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.”
A present New York Met named David Wright mimicked those words the other day: “How am I doing? It’s 80 degrees and I’m about to go out and play baseball for a couple of hours and you’re telling me there’s a couple of feet of snow coming back home,” he said from Port St. Lucie, Fla., laughing. “I’d say I’m doing better than you.”
These are the days, in so many ways, when we need baseball the most, at least those of us who identify the game as an integral part of life (and especially those of us who consider it an essential part of life).
Yes, it’s harder now to try and keep an innocent’s perspective on games, and people like Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez make sure to serve as the modern equivalent to the slave in ancient Rome who would walk behind Caesar and whisper, “Remember thou art mortal.”
Only in Braun’s case, and A-Rod’s, it’s more like stalking the game itself and grumbling: “Remember thou ain’t perfect.”
Which we don’t need to be reminded of, of course, it isn’t perfect, and once the season itself is upon us we will be reminded of that simply by clicking on talk radio and listening to Mets fans gripe about their outfield and Yankees fans groan about their two-out hitting. There will be rainouts. There will be losing streaks. And, sure, there will be news stories that turn the stomach sour.
Which is why this week of every year — the week between the end of the Super Bowl and the beginning of spring training — is, in some ways, the private province of the dreamers and the poets who populate baseball’s constituency. Football’s rancor and rumble is over, pitchers and catchers have not yet reported, so the dispatches that arrive from Tampa and St. Pete and Phoenix and everywhere else have the relaxed tone of postcards from a winter vacation.
Especially the past couple of days, as we stared out windows and watched the snow pile up in our yards and our streets and our driveways, especially as we trudge our way outdoors (or pay off the neighbors’ kids to trudge on as our shoveling surrogates), especially as we look out and see winter wonderlands (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) that make the notion of summer seem as far away as the sun itself.
Especially then.
And yes, yes: I know there are football fans and basketball fans and soccer fans and hockey fans who already have felt their gizzards rumble at the notion of another breathless stanza about the glories and wonders of the emerald diamond, if they even have bothered to get this far at all. I get it. Football is more popular. Basketball gets higher ratings. A billion or more people care about World Cup qualifying than the proper construction of a 40-man roster.
Understood.
Still, in a time when we wrap nostalgic arms around every idea that allows us to think of simpler times, it is remarkable that the notion of the hot stove still is alive and well, that the mere images or words emanating from the warmth of training camps can, in the mind’s eye anyway, make the snow drifts disappear for a little while.
Sure, it’s these crazy romantic notions that enable the crooks and the cheaters to thrive, always have, whether it was gambling or greenies or steroids. Poetry doesn’t apply well to needles, and snapping back to reality rarely is pretty.
Still. It’s 80 degrees Down There. Right now they’re doing better than us.
Whack Back at Vac
Chris Bogner: The Super Bowl was a helluva game — something for everyone, even the conspiracy theorists. But the half-time show was Bey-oring! They should have gone with Jimmy Buffett!
Vac: I’m starting to wonder if there’s any halftime show that could get a 100-percent approval rating. Maybe next year they should just show the wedding scene from “The Godfather” on the JumboTron. That might get close.
Bob Buscavage: The Catskills are known for the “Borscht Belt” and now MLB has the Miami “Bosch Belt!”
Vac: Maybe A-Rod simply got confused, made a few wrong turns in South Florida, and thought he was visiting Chris Bosh instead …
@CouchPotatoCop: I commend New Orleans for coming back after Hurricane Katrina, but they’ve got to lose one turn in the rotation for Super Bowl sites. The blackout was inexcusable.
@MikeVacc: Normally, I’d agree with you. But if the alternatives are returns to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Detroit, Minneapolis … you see where I’m going here, right? Frenchman Street alone earns NOLA a mulligan.
Vincent Porreca: It seems certain Joe Torre and Tony La Russa will go into the Hall of Fame next year, yet it would appear no other managers have ever benefitted more from steroid players on their teams. What am I missing here?
Vac: It does beg the question about what the waiting period for enablers should be, doesn’t it?
Vac’s Whacks
Not sure why there’s an outcry about the Mets and the casino. I mean, wouldn’t you want to sit at a blackjack table knowing the Wilpons and the Katzes are the house?
* All due respect to Our Guy, the great Michael Riedel, but when he’s the most interesting character during two hours’ worth of “Smash” season 2 premieres — and maybe the best actor, too — it does make you worry a little bit about “Smash,” season 2.
* All I know is, I cued up that Budweiser/ Clydesdales/“Landslide” Super Bowl commercial for Mrs. Whacks a few days ago, and the next thing I knew I was trapped in the final few scenes of “Steel Magnolias.”
* Question: How come the Heat and the Thunder can lose to the Wizards — pre-John Wall, by the way — and it doesn’t sound nearly as cataclysmic as when the Knicks have a bad night in the nation’s capital?