Now that your in the mood for a little baseball, here we go! How could you not be ready for baseball after hearing that song? I don’t know about your ball park, but “Centerfield” by John Fogerty is played before every baseball game at Fenway Park. And there is nothing like walking out of the tunnel at Fenway, hearing that song blasted over the sound system, gazing over the hallowed ground of the field, and then your eyes hit the Green Monster. Not many other ballparks can offer the ambiance that Fenway Park can provides.
Although in New England, many believe that the Red Sox and Yankees are the only teams on the planet, yet there are other teams out there. Whichever team you follow, this has got be the most exciting time of the year. Every team has a chance, even the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals fans can fantasize about World Series dreams. Why not? Its opening day, your team is undefeated, and if your team wins the first one then they can’t lose them all.
For months and months I’ve listened to pontificators and blow-hards on the sports talk shows on 98.5 The Sports Hub and 850 WEEI talk about their prognostications and projections on how the season will pan out for the Sox. Will the Sox win over 100 games? How will Beckett and Lackey perform? Will we see the Papelbon of old? Soon the questions will stop and we will be able to sit back and enjoy the 2011 baseball season.
Now I know many will argue that football has over taken baseball as America’s game, but I am hear to say that baseball is and will always be America’s past time. This fact has never been as eloquently stated as it was by James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams. Jones’ character, Terrence Mann, says, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has 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 of us of all that once was good and it could be again.”
Today you can relish in the fact that baseball is back. The local nine, the boys of summer, what ever you call them, they are back. “Well, beat the drum and hold the phone the sun came out today! We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field. A-roundin’ third, and headed for home, it’s a brown-eyed handsome man; anyone can understand the way I feel.” Let’s play ball!