Spring Training

I read a piece yesterday by a Bitter Old Man who was bemoaning the loss of the Spring Training of his youth. You know, the one where the Boston Braves played the Brooklyn Dodgers for $1.25 tickets, quarter hot dogs and so forth. That, from the days when a new Ford was $800, Toyota was thought to be a serious medical condition, and average household incomes hovered around $6 per year.
I just had my first experience of Spring Training. My Compulsively Generous Friend called with news of a business meeting he had to make that would allow Me the Moocher to visit several Fields of Dreams in a couple of days. Well, Fields of Dreams for the Phillies, Pirates, Reds and Indians. For the Devil Rays, it would be Field of Fantasy, and for the Yankees, Field of Heavy Expectations.
It was awesome.
I grew up with an understanding of, and participation in, the Redneck Riviera of Destin, Panama City and Pensacola, but I hate Florida in the Summer. I wrestle with whether the God of Love could actually create and sentence people to a place like the traditional Southern (Baptist) notion of Hell, but if it exists, I believe that the temperature and overcrowding will approximate Panama City in mid-August.
But mid-March in Florida is glorious. Brilliant sunshine chasing my Mid-South Winter gray right off of my hide, hot dogs at the park, polite kids newly bitten by the baseball bug begging autographs off of young guys trying to act like the Major Leaguers they desperately want to become. Heaven!
Today, the ticket prices are close to those at the big league parks. The concession prices rival those of the regular season. But then again, I make a little more today than I did in 1964. When I was 3. When the average home price in my community is $228,000, and new car prices are averaging close to $30,ooo, $15 for three hours of Joy seems downright cheap.
My Compulsively Generous Friend gave me my two visits to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, an afternoon in a Turner Field luxury suite, my trip to the park previously known as PacBell, and my visits to Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium. Once more, he has provided an experience that I will now be striving to repeat as often as possible. Everybody should be so fortunate as to have a friend like mine. Because that's another great thing about baseball: it is a communal game. It is designed to be shared by people who know some of its history, most of its rules, and carry a deep faith that something amazing will happen in the next inning, even if that inning will be played by guys wearing numbers that are more common to tight ends and offensive linemen. People who like to share those old stories, and the new dreams that keep the game fresh and exciting every year; that's what baseball is all about.
Thanks, again, Mike, for everything!