Play ball!
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The boys of winter
Ah, yes, the swirling flurries, the children bundled in their parkas, the long lines at the hot chocolate concessions. It can mean only one thing:
Play ball!
Nostalgic baseball-lovers of the world, who wax poetic about the game as though Eden must have been the first ballpark, usually neglect to mention the Siberian conditions under which the season begins above the Mason-Dixon line. The Steelers probably played at least half their games under warmer conditions than will be the case when the Pirates and Cardinals take the field at PNC Park this afternoon.
Evidently, the Pirates are not learning the freezing-fan-friendly marketing techniques of their top minor league club, the Indianapolis Indians. The Indians told fans in advance of last Thursday's home opener that if the game-time temperature failed to reach 60 degrees, everyone present would get free tickets for an additional game in April. The franchise's warm-weather "guarantee" missed the mark by a mere 26 degrees. The fans couldn't use their free tickets the next two days, however. Those games were canceled due to cold.
The most sentimental game
When Tom Hanks complained in "A League of Their Own" that there's no crying in baseball, he was forgetting how weepy the fans and players get on opening day.
In Yankee Stadium last week, they should have been giving away free handkerchiefs at the turnstiles. First of all, the Bronx Bombers brought out the widow and 6-year-old son of late Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle to throw out ceremonial first pitches. Lidle, you may recall, died when his small plane flew into a Manhattan skyscraper last year.
To get everyone additionally choked up, former Yankees all-star Bobby Murcer was subsequently brought out for a hero's welcome, with the twist that he was all shiny bald from cancer treatments and just happy to be alive. In Cincinnati, meanwhile, fans and players alike got lumps in their throats during an ovation for Josh Hamilton, a rookie finally making it to major league baseball after overcoming repeated bouts of drug addiction.
If 37,000 people cry during pre-game ceremonies at PNC Park today, we're guessing the Pirates' arrival home without a losing record is just too emotional.
Uh, if you say so, Saul
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." -- artist/cartoonist Saul Steinberg
Make us a promise
Alan Stein, president of the minor league Lexington Legends in Kentucky, didn't guarantee anything about the weather for the team's home opener Thursday. He simply promised a victory, with the price of failure his willingness to shave his scalp into a pink Mohawk. A past wrongheaded promise forced him to shave his head entirely. This year he was saved by a 4-2 Legends victory.
No word in yet from those zany Nuttings on what they're willing to do to themselves if the Buccos lose today.
He throws like a Mallory
A couple of Purple Heart recipients from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard will be involved in the ceremonial first pitch at the PNC Park opener. If they're smart, they've practiced enough to avoid the public embarrassment of Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory.
Performing the honorary ritual at the Reds' opener last Monday, he threw the ball even wilder than most of Steve Blass's pitches in 1973. In a funky, girly motion that would have made a teenage Tatum O'Neal gag, he tossed a dribbler way left of the plate. The 45-year-old mayor has been the subject of televised replays and jokes ever since.
One imagines athletic former football punter Luke Ravenstahl doing a bit better.
Pelosi must be a fan
There will be a lot of liberals on the North Shore today. The most recent nationwide Harris Interactive survey on American adults' favorite sports found only 14 percent count baseball as their preference (29 percent ranked football first). Among liberals, however, 20 percent picked baseball No. 1.
It could be that peacenik leftists like the relatively non-violent nature of the game. George Carlin used to riff quite eloquently on all of the militaristic language in football (bombs, blitzes, shotguns) compared to baseball's gentler terminology (diamonds, free passes, going home).
Don't bug him during the game
"With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them." -- author Art Hill
First Published April 8, 2007 9:48 pm
