Jan. 4th, 2006

primroseburrows: (pudge)
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

I've had that quote in my LJ userinfo for almost as long as I've had a LJ. It's a pretty good representation of how I feel about the warm-weather seasons and about baseball and how it's really all wrapped up in one big, awesome package for me. I knew that A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote it, and that he was once the Commissioner of Baseball.

What I didn't know is that the quote is the first few sentences of a gorgeous essay, which at first glance is a retrospective piece about one particular game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, but really it's more--it's about baseball, and hope, and heartbreak, and the Endless Summer.

One line stands out:

"It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever..

Geh, I can just feel that. I remember those warm, vibrant days; 'way back then, when the game was on the Transistor, Yaz was at the plate, the hot dogs were on the grill, and the Summer was never going to end.


It's from The Green Fields of the Mind, by A. Bartlett Giamatti. Y'all should do yourselves a favour and go read it, even if you're not much of a baseball fan. It's just beautiful. I wish I could write like that.


*sigh* Is it Spring yet?



P.S. Thanks to someone over at [livejournal.com profile] redsox for the link . It really made my whole day.


Oh, and ExpandAll you need is LOVE )

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