No, I'm not talking about Christmas. I'm talking about something even better.
Baseball.
Tomorrow, I will observe the most important holiday on MY personal calendar: Opening Day. I will observe it the best way possible: by getting up bright and early, grabbing a cup of coffee, and heading to the ballpark for a day of grilling, beer, and April afternoon baseball.
Are the Phillies going to be any good this year? Probably not. But the great thing about Opening Day is the hope.. even in towns like Milwaukee with the perennially terrible Brewers, there is still the buzz of excitement... the buzz of possibility.
In this way, as in many others, baseball is a metaphor for life. There is a long grind to come which will separate winners from losers, the best from the rest... some have a better shot at success than others, some appear to be doomed before the first pitch is thrown.
But until the last out is recorded, the last game played... there is ALWAYS a chance to do what nobody thought you could. Go Phillies.
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2 comments:
In this humble Cubs fan's opinion, the thing about Philly is that they have lost their ability to hope. I was at opening day and the fans did not come out with open minds and open hearts ready to welcome the Phillies back into their lives. They were there to boo the decision to start Placido Polanco over Chase Utley. They were there to say how bad Kenny Lofton is, how lazy Bobby Abreu is, and guess how many strike-outs Jim Thome was going to have by the All-Star Break this year. Opening day should be about hope, but not in this town. In this town, frustration is the name of the game and it consumes the fans. It eats away at them, making them nasty and unforgiving people. After living in Philly for 7 years, I know that Philly needs to win a championship, but I'm starting to wonder whether they deserve it.
I'm not even sure "deserve" is the issue anymore.. I think "need" is more like it. It's only going to get uglier and uglier.
The only thing I don't like is that Philly gets the reputation of being somehow worse than towns like Boston. Before last year, those people would kill you if you walked into their stadium in a Yankee uniform. But somehow, their fans were portrayed as lovable losers. Philly just gets portrayed as a bunch of jerks... I'm not saying it's not true, I'm just saying it's also true in other cities.
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