SPRING (TRAINING) IS IN THE AIR
A sassy cardinal caught my eye today, his puffed-up chest and vermilion feathers freshly preened for maximum effect. Yup. Spring is definitely here.
The official MLB Opening Day (March 27) just passed. April means the 2025 baseball season has begun in earnest. To celebrate this harbinger of summer (and the boys, thereof), you could join me here at the Four-Leaf Tavern, grab a cold frosty, and recall the storied Red Sox seasons of 1975-76 with these two excerpts from “Big Green Monster”––a chapter in To the Next Home Run:
The winter had been a long slog, even for New England. Spring, the coy maiden, had withheld her shy smile from sun-starved Bostonians till they were half-mad with desire for her. Summer shuffled in, late and disheveled, making no convincing promises to stick around, as if she had better options elsewhere. Rocky stared out the tavern window, disgusted by the fickle weather ––rain again for the third day that week–– and heaved a sigh. His whole mood bordered on depressive lately, mixed with a kind of inertia that threatened to paralyze him.
* * *
Forcing himself out of his fugue and back to the present, he opened the Sox [training camp] program to a page with pictures of Fred Lynn and Luis Tiant. The brief articles touted the major contributions they had both made to the ’75 team. He smiled when he saw the caption “Loo-ee! Loo-ee!” under Tiant’s photo, recalling the chants of the fans whenever the pitcher took the mound. The jukebox whirred to life just then, as the first of the early-shift crowd drifted into the bar. Someone had pressed the “P10” button and the sixties song by the Kingsmen blared over the speakers at the same moment.
“I don’t care if I’m a hundred,” Rocky yelled to Teddy over the music, “that song’ll still put me in a happy mood. And I don’t dance.”
Teddy pulled the wallet from his back pocket, mimicked singing into a microphone, ran his hand down the “cord” of the chain that dangled from it, threw back his head and wailed, “A-Louie, Lou-eye, Oh-oh no-o, we gotta go…”
“…and you for sure can’t sing!” Rocky howled over the combined racket. “Enough! I can’t take anymore. I’ll be in the office.” He grabbed the program and headed down the hallway.
©copyright 2023 by Jayne M. Adams
I know, that was just a tease. By now, you’re in your recliner, firing up YouTube to find clips of some old games of your favorite team, and having yourself a fine old time revisiting epic plays and past glories. You may not even like the Red Sox. Go figure. Some people actually hate them. But ––if you have a soul, believe in miracles, love to cheer for the guys who put in the work––pretty sure you love baseball.
Here’s to Spring and to the promise it holds: this just might be the year Luck smiles on you. That’s surely what that cardinal has in mind.