WHEN WE LOSE SOMEONE...
WHEN WE LOSE SOMEONE we love, we grieve, we mourn, we remember, but the pain never really goes away. I know…I’ve lost people I’ve loved. So to say losing the opportunity to play baseball is like losing a person sounds, well…all I can say is, if you’ve never played the game, you won’t understand. If you have, you will. It’s that simple.
Doesn’t matter if you’ve played in your backyard or Yankee Stadium, baseball players share things those who never played can’t understand.
It’s the little things like the smell of the grass, or the varnish and pine tar from your bat, or the addicting aroma of leather that requires every player to sniff the pocket of their glove at least once each inning. Usually it’s just a quick glove-to-the-face move, but notice how they inhale each time they do that, and how the glove lingers near their face before the player moves it away.
It’s the feel of a bat in your hand and the need to swing it in front of a mirror or window or with the sun at your back so your image or shadow can provide proof your swing is level and your weight is back. But it also just feels good to swing a bat. And right.
It’s the irony that when you hit a ball hard, right on the screws, you can hardly feel it in your hands. And when you hit that ball hard, you know before anyone else in the world knows where that ball is headed. Like a secret you share with yourself and your bat for just a millisecond.
Some say baseball is slow. I say it’s the people who say that who are the slow ones.
They don’t understand building tension or how a clock can never end a game or how great athletes from other sports can’t hit a baseball. Why is that? I’ll tell you why; it’s because hitting a round ball coming at you at 100 miles an hour, from only sixty feet away, with a round bat, is harder to do than anything else in sports.
That’s why when you’re good at baseball and can’t play, nothing can replace it. Nothing.
I’ve heard people say I was one of the best. Some even say I was the best ever, but that’s not for me to decide. All I know is, when you lose the game, you will do anything to get the game back. Even if it’s for only one last at bat.
—A ballplayer
Doesn’t matter if you’ve played in your backyard or Yankee Stadium, baseball players share things those who never played can’t understand.
It’s the little things like the smell of the grass, or the varnish and pine tar from your bat, or the addicting aroma of leather that requires every player to sniff the pocket of their glove at least once each inning. Usually it’s just a quick glove-to-the-face move, but notice how they inhale each time they do that, and how the glove lingers near their face before the player moves it away.
It’s the feel of a bat in your hand and the need to swing it in front of a mirror or window or with the sun at your back so your image or shadow can provide proof your swing is level and your weight is back. But it also just feels good to swing a bat. And right.
It’s the irony that when you hit a ball hard, right on the screws, you can hardly feel it in your hands. And when you hit that ball hard, you know before anyone else in the world knows where that ball is headed. Like a secret you share with yourself and your bat for just a millisecond.
Some say baseball is slow. I say it’s the people who say that who are the slow ones.
They don’t understand building tension or how a clock can never end a game or how great athletes from other sports can’t hit a baseball. Why is that? I’ll tell you why; it’s because hitting a round ball coming at you at 100 miles an hour, from only sixty feet away, with a round bat, is harder to do than anything else in sports.
That’s why when you’re good at baseball and can’t play, nothing can replace it. Nothing.
I’ve heard people say I was one of the best. Some even say I was the best ever, but that’s not for me to decide. All I know is, when you lose the game, you will do anything to get the game back. Even if it’s for only one last at bat.
—A ballplayer