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Souvenirs Tell Stories — Part 8: Baseball Stories
Spring has always been my favorite time of the year because of the warmer weather, the rebirth of the grass and the flowers, and the start of baseball season. As a boy, I absolutely loved the smell of fresh, moist grass in the infield as we practiced outside for the first time, and I truly enjoyed reading the reports from spring training as Mickey Mantle and all my other favorites prepared for a new season. Unfortunately, the spring of 2020 has been so different.
Yes, the grass and the flowers are beginning to reappear, but due to the virus, baseball has been put on hold. The high-school and college seasons have been canceled. The Major League season has been postponed. Even a game of catch in the local playground has been discouraged. The reality is a tough adjustment for fans everywhere.
Recently, one of my former students admitted that he missed the game so much that he asked all his Facebook friends to post baseball pictures to help him through the interim. In addition, the television stations are broadcasting not live games but replays of historic contests. And since there are no games to cover, the sports section of our local newspaper has been cut in half and relegated to the last few pages of the “Local” section. Fortunately, some of us still have our baseball souvenirs, and as I have expressed periodically during these past…
