The football wing of the blog will grant me a brief indulgence.

Today is opening day. It’s a curious and grand American tradition…where young men gather together on verdant fields of green to play with a ball, a bat, and a glove.


In times past, and in some cities today, it’s still the “Great American Pastime”. Over the years, as the distances between us grow shorter along with our attention spans, some have turned against baseball as ‘too slow’, ‘too quant’, and just too out of touch to be considered “America’s Game” any longer.

Cities with championship football teams and a rabid fan base are often among the leaders in this chorus, but are the two really that different?

Baseball harkens back to a simpler time, when society could afford a couple of hours to sit in the sun and while away an afternoon watching a baseball game. In many places where baseball still has that aura, there will be countless creative excuses during the rare day game to answer where someone was.

Here in Boston…our “lyrical little bandbox of a ballpark” is celebrating it’s 99th season. For a while, it seemed like the park was doomed as too small and too out-of-date. But the new ownership has sunk millions of their own dollars into renovations, and have turned Fenway from an aging relic back into the crown jewel of baseball that it is….and they did it all without any public funding or tax breaks. (Of course, they’ve raised prices on everything else, but that’s another story.)

So…like my brethren who toil through the searing days of summer counting the days until the leaves turn and the behemoths gather on the gridiron for their autumn toil…I now await the umpire’s call of “Play Ball!”

It’s been a long, dark winter…categorized by weeks of endless snow, and chill temperatures. We looked with hope and optimism 1500 miles to the south to sunny Florida as our athletes gathered to begin the long season…and now, much like the Earth’s renewal of Spring, we await with the hope and joy that a new year of baseball brings.

I probably won’t be getting to Fenway this season….but I have a little patch of grass out back, and a glove, a ball, and a boy to play catch with. Truly, what is more American than that?