Ok. So the World Series begins. Here in Chicago it is cold. It snowed yesterday. And we are clearly in an early winter mode though it might break again. But the fact that baseball is being played still is nothing short of amazing. Baseball belongs to warm days and a slow summer pace. The ball game playing somewhere on a radio is part of the summer. Time does slow down in summer and we look to our National Past Time to take the measure of the hot months.
In Chicago it is Wrigley Field that takes you back to a time when baseball was the sport. It is an old ivy covered stadium that is now finally going to be retrofitted. But it still has that old tang of summer hot dogs, beer, peanuts. The game simply cant be played when it is cold out and we don't have that association. When I was researching for The Pitcher I was stuck by how many players were farm kids and how many players hated winters. The off season was just hell then.
But now we have the series and football is in full swing. The two sports are in two different universes. Football is a gladiator sport played under any condition. Baseball seems almost quaint in comparison. Of course it is not quaint. It is a hard fought battle that will be played out over the next two weeks. With football under siege now because so many players are getting their brains scrambled baseball might be the sport we are left with.
I guess that would be one way to make sure The World Series is the only game in town.
www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
In Chicago it is Wrigley Field that takes you back to a time when baseball was the sport. It is an old ivy covered stadium that is now finally going to be retrofitted. But it still has that old tang of summer hot dogs, beer, peanuts. The game simply cant be played when it is cold out and we don't have that association. When I was researching for The Pitcher I was stuck by how many players were farm kids and how many players hated winters. The off season was just hell then.
But now we have the series and football is in full swing. The two sports are in two different universes. Football is a gladiator sport played under any condition. Baseball seems almost quaint in comparison. Of course it is not quaint. It is a hard fought battle that will be played out over the next two weeks. With football under siege now because so many players are getting their brains scrambled baseball might be the sport we are left with.
I guess that would be one way to make sure The World Series is the only game in town.
www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
