Wednesday marks the start of another season of Major League Baseball and my Yankees open up in Tampa on Friday. The start of the baseball season is the unofficial start of spring for me, so it's always filled with anticipation and excitement, especially with this glorious run we Yankee fans have had since the start of the 1993 season. I was in the Army back then when the team finally had emerged from the few dark seasons and laid the foundation for the late 1990s dynasty and the 2009 championship squad.
NFL hall of famer, Howie Long, perfectly contrasted baseball and football. In his hall of fame induction speech he said that while baseball was America’s pastime, football was America’s passion. I agree with that. I’m passionate about football, but love baseball. Someone else described the distinction as football being the way life is while baseball is the way life should be. No matter how much the owners and players try to screw it up, and the media criticizes it, baseball is still a great game. A game to enjoy for the whole family, and my family surely does.
The thing I cherish most about baseball is the nostalgia, both in the game and in your own experience. The game is a time machine where you can envision the players of the past playing the same game as today, and the players from today playing in the past, even with the whole steroid issue. The personal nostalgia is the memories I have, of my parents being big baseball fans (they still are), but my father being mainly a Met fan, and my mother being a die-hard Yankee fan. I was born in 1972, so I never got to see the original Yankee Stadium, but my mother did. She also got to see Mickey Mantle play. My mother suffers from dementia, but while her memories have left her they remain with me from the stories she shared. That’s the beauty of baseball
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