April 2, 2007
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1 Spring has officially sprung.2 I got out to the Coliseum yesterday to watch the Giants play the A’s and they got
whooped.3 Box seats, first base side, and I loved it.
4 Barry Bonds lost so much weight he looked like he was wearing baggy Dockers, but he still smashed two gargantuan home runs.
5 He evidently could have done that all along without the clear, or the cream, or the attitude.6 I was pretty indifferent. I’ll spare people my thoughts, but I won’t waste too much space on that guy.
7 Despite all of it, it’s still all about baseball.
8 I loved it. I love the Coliseum, no matter what they want to call the place. It looked great because they successfully disguised Mt. Davis with tarps and names and numbers of some great A’s players. It made the entire place look much more intimate, and it was the Coliseum, in all it’s glory.
9 Baseball.
10 The best part was listening to the last out, when it was announced that Spring training was officially over, and that baseball was starting.
11 No matter how much else goes on in the world, it happens every Spring. And no matter how cliche it sounds, it still is all about hope, memories, being a kid, and times spent with family and friends rooting for the home team.
12 What a grand way to spend a day. Sandwiches, sun, peanuts, the beauty and poetry of the defense, and the fans, vendors, and the breeze. I fell asleep in the sixth inning, and I guess I’ll never get that one back, but that is the point.
13 I could have been beaned by a foul ball. The game could have gone into 23 extra innings. A potential home run could have hit a bird flitting across the yard.
14 Moving on: I got home and prepared a great spaghetti and meatballs feast, and later put the movie The Rookie on. Great baseball film, one of the best. Nobody created miracles, no lightning, no ghosts, no switches to the modern Hall of Fame. Just a movie about a guy and the game. Dennis Quaid. Loved it.
15 It always begs the question: What is the greatest baseball movie of all time? How about the ten best?
16 See? It’s tougher than you think, especially if you couldn’t care less about the best sport in the world.
17 Personal opinion, of course.
18 Anyway, I’ll miss my first Opening Day in years.
19 Oops.
20 It’s true though.
21 So this was fun. You’d be surprised how something as simple as baseball can take on tremendous meaning as we move through life. I can think only of when I was a kid and we had a sandlot behind our house when I was growing up.
22 We would take small pieces of cement that were lying around and we would bury them, making them into bases among the weeds.
23 Across the way was a place called the Colonial Bakery, next to the See’s Candy store that still sits in South San Francisco, right off El Camino Real. Right between that See’s and my old house stood the sandlot. I remember the wonderful smell of baking bread coming from the bakery when we would play on cloudy days. We could walk there and get bread, or donuts, and sometimes move over to See’s for some chocolate samples, and then on to a Rexall Drug Store to see if the latest Superman or Adventure Comics had come out yet.
24 If not, we could always buy a pack of baseball cards, but only if we had a nickel.
25 The bubble gum that came with the cards was free.
26 I bought a pack of baseball cards yesterday.
27 No gum.
28 That was about the only difference yesterday. The game survived, and so did I. Nine players on defense. Coaches at the corners. Dugouts. Take me out to the ballgame; take me out to the crowd…
29 And beginning tonight, they all count. Every game.
30 It means we all made it. We’re all home again.31 Play ball.
32 Go Giants.
33 Peace.
NOTE:Suddenly Xanga won’t let me pull up pictures from Google UNLESS
I go through AOL.But AOL sucks and won’t let me go on it UNLESS I go through Mozilla Firefox.
AOL will allow me to reach it only through Mozilla Firefox but will not let me pull up pictures from GOOGLE
UNLESS
I go through AOL.But AOL sucks and won’t let me go on it UNLESS I go through…
but we’ve been there.
I’m working on it.
~H~
