Happy Baseball Season!

Today is a holiday and it lasts until early November. Today is the first day of baseball season.

A good friend, and one of the biggest Giants fans I know sent the following to me this morning and I wanted to share it.

So, at the risk of seeming schmaltzy, sentimental, and overly romantic--which I am--I thought I'd share this with you all before 5 p.m. tonight comes.

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops….

 

….Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn't this summer, but all the summers that… slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight…

 

…Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun. “

Excerpts From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti

Now let's have a beer or ten, 'cause baseball season is HERE!!!

Feel free to share your own favorite quotes about baseball in the comments section below.