In-between days

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruellest month, but in New England at least I’d argue for March. Now in March, Massachusetts ballfields are bare…and muddy. Imagine being a New England kid who’s just itching for the Little League season to start, and all you see in the place of a field of dreams is a field of mud.

As I explained this time last year, “March madness” in New England doesn’t simply refer to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; it refers to The Big Itch we all feel here in the Northeast as spring is in the air but not yet entirely arrived. This morning, the sun was shining and suburban birds were singing…and the temperature was hovering around freezing. Yes, we can see the ground; yes, the snowdrops and crocuses are poking tentatively out of the earth…but at any moment, we New Englanders know the weather will turn, we’ll get one (or two, or three) more snowfalls, and it will feel like January or February again, not the “spring” announced on our paper calendars.

But, hope springs eternal, especially in spring. In the process of making travel arrangements for the May conference I’d mentioned earlier this week, J and I discovered that the 2008 ALA conference in San Francisco perfectly coincides with the Red Sox road schedule, so we’ll be able to continue last year’s tradition of seeing our hometown boys on the road (this time in Oakland), where we can actually buy face-value tickets rather than paying an exorbitant amount of money to set foot in Fenway Park.

So while Curt Schilling and Kevin Youkilis are blogging in Japan as they continue to train for the Red Sox international season opener against (yes) Oakland, I’m spending the in-between days of March looking forward to May, when the Red Sox once again face Oakland in Oakland, and spring will be here for real.

 

Root, root, root for the home…guy

You might remember me mentioning that Red Sox catcher and captain Jason Varitek lives in Waban, the village of Newton, Massachusetts where I spend my long weekends. Although the fan-edited sign that re-named Varick Street “Varitek Street” is now gone, Varitek’s fans and neighbors here in Waban have transformed the Beacon Street bridge over the T tracks into a sort of shrine covered with encouraging signs. Whether or not the Sox sweep the Rockies in tonight’s World Series game, we know that Tek will be in his usual place behind the plate earning his stripes as the captain, and his fans here in Newton (yours truly included) will scream ourselves hoarse in the meantime.

Elsewhere in Waban, Red Sox Mania is reflected in the breakfast specials at Barry’s Village Deli, where this morning I did my loyal duty by ordering an optimistically named “World Series Winner Special”: two eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, and two slices of challah French toast.

Call me superstitious, but I’m a big believer in Wishful Eating, especially in a deli where the walls are covered with Red Sox and Patriots memorabilia, and one of our regular waitresses was wearing (of course) a Jason Varitek T-shirt. With signs and omens like these, things are looking good for our beloved Sox…fingers crossed.

Click here for a photo set of the Jason Varitek/Boston Red Sox fan signs on the Beacon Street bridge.

 

Joy in Muddy-Water-ville

Here’s hoping the kids at the John W. McCormack Middle School in Dorchester, MA have reason to update their playground billboards. (They could do us all a favor by painting over Johnny Damon with a portrait of Dustin Pedroia, for starters.)

I think NH blogger Amy Kane summed up the morning-after mood in Red Sox nation nicely in her post “Papi ate my homework“:

So we won and here we go again. Red Sox Nation (dark green, on this map, plus Japan) will effectively secede from the union for the next week and a half, all because of some guys who play a sport in their pajamas, have weird hair, and spit a lot.

We will be overexcited and overtired. We will get less done. We will pay little attention to national and local news. We will ignore politics. We will be poor citizens. Meetings will end early. Term papers and newspaper articles will be turned in late. Test scores will drop. There will be less charity and volunteering. On sidelines and in auditoriums parents will be tuned into small high tech devices rather than the strivings of their kids.

Production will be down! Emotions will be up! And oceans of cheap beer will be quaffed! (With fistfuls of Halloween candy.)

Amen to that second paragraph particularly! In the middle of an overloaded semester, I already feel “overexcited and overtired”; I’ve already been ignoring politics along with national and local news. Now that the Red Sox have clambered their way out of the almost-eliminated hole they’d allowed the Cleveland Indians to dig for them, I have an excuse for my grading backlog. How can I keep up with grading, for heaven’s sake, when the Red Sox are heading to the World Series?

In Newton, I watch baseball games on an enormous HDTV; in Keene, I have a tiny TV that doesn’t get any channels other than E! Although I’ll miss Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday, I’ll be in Newton for Games 2, 3, and 4…and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to catch the remaining games should they be necessary, even if that means getting up at the crack of dawn on the morning after a game to drive back to Keene for my 8am class.

A girl has to have priorities, after all, and I for one find weird-haired men in pajamas particularly persuasive.

 

Nail-biter!

Today’s Boston Bruins’ match-up with the New York Rangers came down to a single goal as Phil Kessel scored during the game-ending shoot-out. As I type this, I’m home from the Bruins game and watching the Red Sox trying to avoid ALCS elimination during a do-or-die match-up with the Cleveland Indians. If you’re a Boston sports fan this weekend, you’re going to be stub-nailed by Monday from the ulcer-inducing suspense of it all. Go Sox!

UPDATE: Click here for more pictures from Saturday’s Bruins game. Enjoy!

 

Words from above

Here is yet more proof that God speaks through chalk talk. This is not my handwriting, nor is it one of my classrooms at Keene State College. Instead, it’s a random reminder that at least some folks at Keene State, which enrolls a lot of Yankees fans from Connecticut, have the proper baseball allegiances.

On Friday, the midges of Cleveland vividly illustrated how much God hates the Yankees. This afternoon, J and I will be hunkered in front of the TV for a good ol’ New England sports marathon, cheering the Patriots at 1:00, the Red Sox at 3:00, and the Indians, who are poised to sweep those damn Yankees, at 6:30. Go team, with or without divine intervention.

 

Field of dreams

Last night, I drove to western Massachusetts to catch a Pittsfield Dukes game with Rachel and her husband, Ethan. Last year, I’d met Rachel and Ethan in North Adams to watch Keene’s own Swamp Bats lose to the Steeple Cats, but this year, our schedules didn’t allow us to meet for a Swamp Bats game. So instead of root, root, rooting for my home-team, last night I made like a Pittsfielder and made pilgrimage to historic Wahconah Park to cheer on the Dukes.

I’ve blogged before about the the New England Collegiate Baseball League, the regional collegiate league to which the Keene Swamp Bats, North Adams SteepleCats, and Pittsfield Dukes all belong. As much as I love Major League Baseball, there’s something delightful about seeing college kids playing their hearts out in a small-town setting. This is amateur baseball in the best sense of the term: baseball played for love, not money. Although many players participate in the NECBL to strut their summertime stuff in front of professional scouts, these are players who haven’t yet made it to the big time. In an era when many Major League fans are disgusted with players who lie about performance-enhancing drugs, whine about their multi-million-dollar salaries, and otherwise serve as poster boys for Bad Behavior, regional leagues like the NECBL offer a more wholesome, small-time version of America’s favorite pastime.

Part of the allure of any baseball game–major league or otherwise–is the game itself, the daunting challenge of hitting a round ball squarely teamed with the intricate dance of well-choreographed defense. Watching baseball is a leisurely pursuit: you spend much of your time waiting for the next batter, waiting for the next relief pitcher, or waiting for umpires to confer over a questionable call. The down-times of a good ballgame, however, serve as counterpoint to a good game’s heart-pounding moments. There’s nothing like a well-orchestrated double-play or a safely stolen base to get your adrenaline running, but these highlights tend to happen suddenly, in the blink of any eye, right when your mind might have considered wandering. Along with sudden surprises, a good ballgame offers hushed moments of expectation as everyone’s eyes follow a fly-ball, breathless, to a waiting fielder’s glove, or everyone gets on their feet, fidgety, during an inning-ending at-bat.

It’s easy to wax poetic about baseball, seeing the game as an iconic field of dreams. The young men of the NECBL seem to be a dream-filled bunch, sacrificing their summers to play ball in the hope of being noticed by scouts who can pluck them from small-town obscurity. And yet, I suspect that a young ball-player’s dream of fields is fueled not by wishful thinking but by old-fashioned blood, sweat, and tears: these are fields of doing, not dreaming. It takes a lot of work to make it to the majors; it takes a lot of work to finish a collegiate career and leave that league for the Big Time that is life after graduation. It’s easy to quote Hollywood by saying “if you build it, they will come.” What’s difficult is the actual building, the work required to realize one’s dreams through practice, practice, practice.

Whether or not we’ve ever knocked one out of the ballpark–whether or not we’ve ever belonged to any league, major or minor–we all tend a private field of dreams: a wide, fertile space where almost anything can sprout with the proper cultivation. The magic of Hollywood’s field of dreams isn’t the unbelievable phenomenon of Shoeless Joe Jackson sauntering out of a cornfield; the magic of that field of dreams is the sweat equity it took an unknown Iowan farmer to coax a diamond out of corn.

Whether we dream of making it to the majors, making it out of college, or making a living in a world where bills pile more quickly than cash, it’s the building that causes the coming. In the real world as well as on ballfields, dreaming bears fruit only if it’s coupled with doing. Last night in Pittsfield, it was positively dreamy to see two teams of players, their coaches, and a ballpark full of fans gathered to cheer on some doing, the action of a small-town Monday night happening under lights that shone like stars.

Click here to see my full set of photos from Pittsfield’s historic Wahconah Park. Enjoy!

 

Bold or bone-headed?

A word to the wise. If you’re going to drive around Boston with a hand-painted Yankees logo emblazoned on the back of your vehicle, you might choose a friendlier vanity plate to avoid offending (and enraging) Red Sox Nation.

 

Dream

What baseball-loving kid (or baseball-loving kid-at-heart) doesn’t dream of attending a real live ballgame, catching an errant foul ball, or at least catching the eye of your favorite player with a home-made sign? (Before you comment that this kid has his sign pointing the wrong way, note that it’s double-sided, with “We love you, Big Papi” on one side and a word to Manny Ramirez on the other.)

Boston Red Sox fans are a particularly loyal group…so it should come at no surprise that there were throngs of Sox fans at all three inter-league games at Atlanta’s Turner Field this week. How do I know, you might ask, how many Boston fans traveled all the way to Atlanta to watch their favorite team on the road? I know because I was one of the migrating throng that, motivated by the near impossibility of getting reasonable tickets at Fenway Park, flew to Atlanta, availed myself of the Southern hospitality of friends, and tried my very best not to be an Obnoxious Northerner who offends the locals.

It’s difficult, of course, not to offend the locals when your team ends up winning two out of three games…but on Monday night, before being placed on the Sox disabled list, Curt Schilling served up a loss, so there was a moment of joy in Atlanta before the Sox dominated on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

To give credit where credit is due, Schilling (himself a blogger) didn’t humiliate himself at the plate, managing to get to first base during one of his Monday night at-bats. One of the delights of inter-league play–something loyal Sox fans who stay at home don’t get to see in person–is the sheer novelty of an American League pitcher batting according to National League rules.

Another part of the fun of a major-league ballgame is observing the crowd in attendance: the peanut-eating, beer-chugging folks sitting around you, after all, are one thing you don’t have when you watch a game on TV from home. On all three nights of our Atlanta Invasion, the resident Atlanta fans seemed completely flummoxed by the rabid Sox fans in attendance. “I was buying a beer and heard this huge cheer,” one Atlanta fan noted dejectedly during Wednesday night’s 11-0 thrashing, “so I assumed we had scored. But it turned out it was the visiting fans who were making so much noise.” On Tuesday night, under the liquid encouragement of seemingly omnipresent beer vendors, some Atlanta fans got fed up with the visiting contingent of Red Sox Nation. In response to the visitors’ loud and insistent cheers of “Let’s go, Red Sox,” several Braves fans countered with “Go home, Red Sox!”

Of course, regardless of your team loyalty, when you attend a major league ballgame, you quickly realize the best seats in the house aren’t seats at all, but the railing of either team’s dugout, where the game’s most attentive spectators turn out to be the players themselves.

At one level, baseball fandom is little more than glorified people-watching. Sure, we traveled to Atlanta to watch some actual ballgames, but we also traveled to Atlanta to see the players themselves in the flesh. Where else but six rows back from third base can you contemplate Manny Ramirez’ hair…

Kevin Youkilis’ twisted kick…

or David Ortiz rounding the bases after knocking a homer out of the ballpark?

On TV, you’d probably watch commercials while Big Papi and Youk (another blogger) swapped first-baseman’s stories…

…and if you watched Tuesday night’s ballgame on TV, you definitely didn’t get the chance to be mesmerized by the ant-like activity of the Turner Field grounds-crew raking and laying dry dirt on the field after a rain delay.

For a loyal Red Sox fan, though, the most dreamy picture of all is this one of the Atlanta Braves’ drummer sitting dejectedly on his tom-tom. Who’s in the mood to beat a drum, do a politically incorrect tomahawk chop, or utter a war-whoop when your team is losing 11-0?

This is my belated, somewhat off-topic contribution to this week’s Photo Friday theme, Dream.

 

The not-quite-scoop

The moral to today’s picture is “She who hesitates is scooped.” Early last Monday morning on my way to Zen practice, I noticed a mischievous Red Sox fan had “corrected” the sign for Varick Road in Waban, MA so it now pays homage to Red Sox catcher and captain Jason Varitek. “That’s clever,” I muttered to myself, knowing that Varitek lives somewhere in Waban. “Someday when I have time, I’ll have to take and blog a picture of that.”

Imagine my chagrin, then, when I discovered on Tuesday morning I’d been doubly scooped, first by a blogger with the Newton TAB, and second by a mention of that post on Universal Hub. Hmmmph. No blogger likes to be second on the scene with a particularly blog-worthy bit. This morning when I stopped on my way to Zen practice to snap my own no-longer-original photo of Varitek Road, I solaced myself with the thought that I’m probably the first New Hampshire blogger to break this bit of Red Sox news.

 

Out to the ballgame

In the summertime, nothing beats the sight of baseball players on a field of green in front of a red barn.

Okay, that building isn’t a barn, it’s a carriage house. But it’s barn-red, and it makes a picturesque and quintessentially New England backdrop for the Keene Swamp Bats, who on Friday night sent the Concord Quarry Dogs home yelping with their tails between their legs.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, summer is finally here: on Friday night, I took myself out to the ballgame.

If you don’t live in or around Keene, you’ve probably never heard of the Keene Swamp Bats. Like an obscure musical that is off, off, off Broadway, the Swamp Bats are more minor than the Minor Leagues, but bigger than Little. The Bats belong not to a league of their own, but to a league you’ve probably never heard of: the New England Collegiate Baseball League, which consists of twelve teams in six New England states. NECB players are the real Boys of Summer: college ballplayers from NCAA-member schools who volunteer to go somewhere other than home for the summer, playing ball for teams with colorful names like the Manchester Silkworms, Torrington Twisters, and North Adams Steeplecats.

For towns like Keene that don’t have major or even minor league sports teams, the college players who visit every summer become adopted hometown heroes. Swamp Bats live with local families, work part-time jobs in the community, and otherwise act like typical home-for-the-summer college kids…except they don’t come from around here. This year, Keene’s roster includes players from schools such as Georgia Tech, the University of Pittsburgh, and Clemson, with no fewer than five Swamp Bats originally hailing from my home state of Ohio.

Whether it’s the perpetual appeal of an all-American pastime or the fact that there isn’t much to do in Keene on a Friday night, locals come out in force to root, root, root for the hometeam. Friday night was clear and mild, attracting a crowd of 2,945 fans to Alumni Field. If this doesn’t sound like an impressive turn-out by major league standards, keep in mind that these are college “amateurs,” and Keene has a population of 20,000. When’s the last time you went to a ballgame where more than a tenth of the town showed up in the stands?

And loyal Swamp Bats fans don’t just show up…they dress and buy the part, decking themselves and their kids with purple and black SwampWear. At Friday’s game, folks in the bleachers, grandstand, and sidelines lawn chairs were sporting Swamp Bats hats, shirts, and jackets while roaming throngs of children clutched black or purple balloons, souvenir bats, and other Swamp Swag. The Swamp Bats might be a team you’ve never heard of, but here in Keene they have an enthusiastic following of fans who either appreciate a night of good clean fun or recognize a cheap date (tickets $3 apiece) when they see it.

So, how was the game? As Saturday’s Sentinel article proclaimed, the Swamp Bats scored “early and often,” racking up in the first inning alone nine runs toward their eventual 11-3 win over the Quarry Dogs. So while the beloved Red Sox were spanking the Yankees in Boston (a game whose scores were announced over the loudspeakers at Alumni Field), Keene’s beloved Purple Sox were strutting their stuff in the setting sun.

But any given ballgame is only partly about the game and the grown fans it attracts. Swamp Bats games are popular with families largely because of the goofy on-field games and contests that keep youngsters entertained between innings. At Friday night’s game, a semi-feral herd of youngsters roamed from stands to concessions and back while their parents sat chatting with friends and neighbors: a chance to catch-up with other grownups while the kids found whatever minimal mischief is possible at a family-friendly event. Whether competing in a shoe-fetching relay race with Swamp Bats mascot Ribby or parading around the stands in a sombrero-wearing conga line led by emcee Freddy T, young fans had plenty to keep them occupied during the game’s down times.

And in case you think Keene teens are too cool for such frivolous frolics, there was a high school contingent at the game, undoubtedly drawn by a desire to find Something to Do on a Friday night. In addition to the kids and families at the game, I saw one group of high schoolers led by a teen sporting a spiked mohawk and black “Abortion is Mean” T-shirt. Encountering a clean-cut kid with a “Rock for Life” T, Mr. Mohawk complimented him on his attire. “Did you buy that at SoulFest,” one teen asked the other. “Naw, I got it online,” the other responded, proving that you will know they are Christians not by their haircuts but by their pro-life T-shirts.

My favorite image from Friday’s Swamp Bats game had nothing to do with baseball itself, occurring well before the first pitch as fans queued into Alumni Field. What’s more quintessentially wholesome than a summer baseball game where a proud Big Brother can show a beaming Little Brother that meeting a huge baseball-loving chiropteran isn’t nearly as scary as it sounds? If baseball fans are made, not born, I suspect Ribby made more than a few lifelong fans through his furry extroversion.