Little (?) League

 

Take Me out to the Ballgame

Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.

Amen!

Thoughts while watching the joy in the faces of Little Leaguers when they lined up for autographs of the Red Sox and Oriole players, when Red Sox Manager Alex Cora spoke in Spanish to the team from Puerto Rico, and when watching the Red Sox and Oriole major leaguer players  joyfully slide down the hill on cardboard at Volunteer Field during yesterday’s Little League World Series game.

"They'll come to Iowa Williamsport, Pennsylvania for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

"Of course, we won't mind if you look around," you'll say. "It's only twenty dollars per person." They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.

And they'll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game, and it'll be as if they'd dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they'll have to brush them away from their faces.

People will come, Ray.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.

This field, this game -- it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.

Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."

Thank you W.P. Kinsella for the novel, director Phillip Robinson for the movie, and James Earl Jones for the performance in that movie. Veni, Vidi, Vici.  Come, see, and get a victory for yourselves.