Last week I wrote about how baseball is timeless: not only in the sense that the game is measured by innings rather than minutes, but also that it has the power to bring out the child within. There is no greater example of this than the annual Alumni Game. Last Saturday, Vassar baseball alumni from various generations gathered on Prentiss Field to recapture their college baseball days. The nostalgia for baseball was as thick as in Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days: “I had a friend was a big baseball player… but all he kept talking about was glory days.”
A lot has changed about Vassar baseball since some of the alumni played (a new field, for example). But what hasn’t changed is a love for the game, for the Vassar baseball program, and for the school. These passions have persisted throughout all the generations of Vassar baseball. They are what keep the alumni coming back year after year.
Alfonso Lopez, a Vassar graduate of ’92 hit a screaming line drive, which I jumped up and snared out of the air, robbing him of a base hit, and perhaps, a chance to relive his glory days. (He proceeded to shout: “I know your dad!” which is true, though I didn’t know at the time or I would not have been so unkind as to get him out.) But I imagine that getting a base hit was not necessary for Alfonso to rekindle his glory days. Because Vassar baseball is about more than just one base hit here or there. It is about the camaraderie we form with our teammates and coaches. And perhaps, the alumni are still basking in their glory days when they come back and see all their old friends and teammates, and marvel at how far the program they left behind has grown.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Baseball Transcends Time In A 50 Inning Game
Baseball is timeless. There is no set number of minutes to be played. A game could last nine innings or it could last 50, like it did last Saturday when we split into two teams and played a 50 inning game to raise money for our spring trip to Florida.
We began at 9 am. A pitching machine was rolled out to the mound and everybody on the team, including pitchers, came to the plate more than 20 times. We played different positions in the field; positions we had never played before but always dreamt about playing. Left-handed pitchers played shortstop and outfielders played infield. It was a day not only for us to raise money, but also recapture the youthful innocence of playing baseball.
Because, you see, baseball transcends time in another sense as well. As reclusive author Terrance Mann says in Field of Dreams, “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.”
Indeed, when we sit and watch a game at Wrigley Field on a warm July day in the year 2009, we may as well be watching the same game on that same July day in 1989. We can see our childhood heroes running those same 90 feet between bases that the players of today run. The game hasn’t changed. It has remained timeless. And it revitalizes the child within.
We began at 9 am. A pitching machine was rolled out to the mound and everybody on the team, including pitchers, came to the plate more than 20 times. We played different positions in the field; positions we had never played before but always dreamt about playing. Left-handed pitchers played shortstop and outfielders played infield. It was a day not only for us to raise money, but also recapture the youthful innocence of playing baseball.
Because, you see, baseball transcends time in another sense as well. As reclusive author Terrance Mann says in Field of Dreams, “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.”
Indeed, when we sit and watch a game at Wrigley Field on a warm July day in the year 2009, we may as well be watching the same game on that same July day in 1989. We can see our childhood heroes running those same 90 feet between bases that the players of today run. The game hasn’t changed. It has remained timeless. And it revitalizes the child within.
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