I’m waiting to see it.
We’ve all been waiting to see it.
I’ve been looking most of the last month, really. Every time I get in the car, I look for it.
Oh, I can hear it sometimes, on the radio, when the weather
is right and the station comes in and I remember that it’s on, and I’ve been
able to see it on TV a few times while channel surfing, from Florida. I’ve even been able to read about it in the
papers and online, Big Papi popping off, phenoms being sent down, bad elbows
being sent to Dr. Andrews. But I haven’t
found it yet myself, not in person.
Baseball.
It usually doesn’t hide this long. I’ve always seen it by now, a least a little
bit. A knit hat exchanged for a ball cap,
a Carhartt coat for a windbreaker, a kid throwing a whiffle ball instead of a
snowball, a boy walking down the street with a bat on his shoulder.
Not this year. It’s
April 1 as I write this, April Fool’s Day, but believe me, this is no
joke. The ground outside is still frozen,
four, maybe five feet down, frost so deep my neighbor’s well froze up. There’s still snow on the ground and the sap
in the maples has just started running.
I’ve yet to see a single robin and the puppy we got last fall, which is
now almost fully grown, looks at the stray chickadee like he’s never seen a bird
before because, well, he sort of hasn’t.
Southern New England got the snow, northern New England the cold. One day this winter, my truck froze fast to
the ground. I think the snowplow is permanently
rusted on. I ran out of wood for the stove last night and when I saw a
half-dozen wood bats leaned up in the corner of my basement, I swear my first
thought was “kindling.”
I drove by the school the other day up here, past the
ballfield where I used to coach Little League, but no one was on it. Mud season hasn’t even started yet, much less
baseball season. People are still skiing
every weekend and skating, and it’s only been the last week that they finally
stopped driving across the lake to ice fish. Hockey leads off the nightly news.
Hot dogs? Hamburgers? Popcorn? Grilling? Are you kidding? We’re still making pea soup,
chili and stew, drinking more whiskey than beer, and buying chain saw oil instead
of sun block.
I even went south, six weeks ago, to Florida to see my
daughter in school and couldn’t even find it there. Spring training hadn’t really started and
even though it was 70 degrees warmer than here, it was still jacket weather. I can’t remember a year like this before, or
a spring, and I’m old enough now that when I say that, it means something.
Last year seems so far off I can’t remember it anymore. Who did Jon Lester sign with, anyway? Wasn’t he supposed to come back? Does Boston
have a third baseman yet? Did the manager get fired? Is Dustin Pedroia still
hurt? Why is Derek Jeter not playing shortstop for the Yankees? Where did the Sox
finish, anyway, first place, or last?
Damned if I know.
I haven’t seen a Street and Smith’s at the drugstore. No pennants for sale at the Dollar General. No six-year-old boys in “Little Slugger”
jackets. No packs of baseball cards. No
pink hats.
So today I bundle up, down vest under leather jacket, wool gloves
and knit alpaca hat, and take the dogs for a walk across the frozen
tundra. It’s all new to the little one,
and he ruffles in the weeds beneath the trees, sniffing out smells and getting
burrs stuck to his snout. Then he
suddenly takes off, something hanging from his mouth, something he knows he
shouldn’t have which is why he wants it, and we’re off. We tear through the
back yard, him playing a game and me hollering and getting madder, figuring
he’s found a dead mouse or part of rabbit or something else that didn’t survive
the winter, up and around the garden and the house, through the pines and
sumac, until he finally drops it and runs away to find something else, tongue
hanging out pink and happy.
I go to see what it is. It’s mostly round, sort of gray, damp
and heavy, kind of stringy. Then I see
them, dim red stitches, and a flap of loose leather. Something lost some summer
a long time ago, and now, at last, found in spring.
I pick it up, and there it is again. Baseball.
Glenn Stout is
Longform Editor of SB Nation and
author of Fenway 1912. He lives in Vermont and is still freezing his ass off.
@GlennStout
