There are a few important days every year. We have a host of religious holidays, too many to mention, and you would have to use all your fingers and toes to count them. The political and historical holidays, like 4th of July, Thanksgiving, MLK Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day. President’s Day. Birthdays and sweetheart days, like Valentine’s make the list, too. Maybe even St. Paddy’s Day and a host of others. We have added some through the years, like June Teenth, a new holiday and we probably subtracted some holidays, too, I’m not sure. I just know there are a lot. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving for a lot of reasons, I might have already written about them.
But I must say that one of the most celebrated, most important days in American culture is the first day of baseball season every spring. It is awesome. People go hog wild, taking off from work, skipping school, planning parties, “Of course, I’ll be gone, it’s the first day of baseball. Why would you ask?” They wear new duds, the jerseys and t-shirts of their favorite teams. They make sure their gloves are oiled and ready to catch that first foul ball from the stands, and they look forward to the first home run of the season and, of course, who’s gonna sing the National Anthem for the first game? Ticketmaster goes nutso, too.
The celebration and anticipation really start a few weeks before the big game with spring training, and this year the World Baseball Championship tagged onto spring training, and we saw American players from many countries saluting their home country. It was awesome.
The seventh inning stretch and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” rank high as things to look forward to, even if you have a tin ear and a song in your heart, not your throat. “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, I don’t care if I never get back…” Google guarantees it to be sung anywhere you find bats (not the flying kind, rather the wooden or metal kind). Who doesn’t love that song? And peanuts and Cracker Jacks?
I could write about the Super Bowl, which attracts a plethora of fans, too, Super Bowl parties and all kinds of hoopla, but it’s just not the same. For one thing, it’s in the winter and baseball is a spring sport, right up there with robins and crocuses and being barefoot. It’s America’s game. We are Cardinal fans, but any game will do.
Welcome Spring!
The Cowboy and I are taking a trip…be back soon.
