I've Got Baseball Fever
My fervor for baseball is year around.
Every day, I check the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, mlb.com and a few other assorted websites for fresh news about baseball and particularly my Detroit Tigers.
I am not sure what drives my passion for the Tigers or the game itself, but it is a fever that stays hot and intensifies in February.
My spirit and optimism grows as opening day hits and culminates with the World Series, after which I feel some effects of withdrawal with the end of the season. But, then before you know it, February has arrived and pitchers and catchers report. Baseball is back.
No matter what words I use to describe my feeling for the game, the best I can offer is that baseball is a blessing. Day-by-day, I, and millions others, receive an opportunity to experience the ups and down of a team - my team, my Tigers.
Ah, precious baseball returns. And, that my friends, makes me smile. I know, it isn't long before we will again feel that warmth of a hot summer night as cracks of a bat are mixed with horns and howls, cries and cheers. Ah, yes, it is a game that truly delivers.
To build on my words, I have included a series of some of my favorite quotes about baseball. Enjoy.
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."
~Walt Whitman
"Baseball? It's just a game - as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business - and sometimes even religion."
~Ernie Harwell, "The Game for All America," 1955
"Baseball, almost alone among our sports, traffics unashamedly and gloriously in nostalgia, for only baseball understands time and treats it with respect. The history of other sports seems to begin anew with each generation, but baseball, that wondrous myth of twentieth century America, gets passed on like an inheritance."
~Stanley Cohen
"It is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. It is purer than any dance because the actions of the players are not governed by music or crowded into a formula by a director. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball."
~Jimmy Cannon
"Baseball, like Pericles' Athens (or any other good society), is simultaneously democratic and aristocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, but the more you apply yourself, the more you enjoy it. "
~ George Will
"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona."
~ George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, 1990
"Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when they're already there?"
~ Larry Anderson
"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it."
~ Rogers Hornsby
"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."
~ Bryant Gumbel, 1981
"With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them."
~ Art Hill
"That's baseball, and it's my game. Y' know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave 'em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of 'em."
~ Humphrey Bogart
"Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?"
~Jim Bouton, 1988
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem."
~ Saul Steinberg
And perhaps my favorite --
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, 'The Green Fields of the Mind,' Yale Alumni Magazine, November 1977
Every day, I check the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, mlb.com and a few other assorted websites for fresh news about baseball and particularly my Detroit Tigers.
I am not sure what drives my passion for the Tigers or the game itself, but it is a fever that stays hot and intensifies in February.
My spirit and optimism grows as opening day hits and culminates with the World Series, after which I feel some effects of withdrawal with the end of the season. But, then before you know it, February has arrived and pitchers and catchers report. Baseball is back.
No matter what words I use to describe my feeling for the game, the best I can offer is that baseball is a blessing. Day-by-day, I, and millions others, receive an opportunity to experience the ups and down of a team - my team, my Tigers.
Ah, precious baseball returns. And, that my friends, makes me smile. I know, it isn't long before we will again feel that warmth of a hot summer night as cracks of a bat are mixed with horns and howls, cries and cheers. Ah, yes, it is a game that truly delivers.
To build on my words, I have included a series of some of my favorite quotes about baseball. Enjoy.
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us."
~Walt Whitman
"Baseball? It's just a game - as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business - and sometimes even religion."
~Ernie Harwell, "The Game for All America," 1955
"Baseball, almost alone among our sports, traffics unashamedly and gloriously in nostalgia, for only baseball understands time and treats it with respect. The history of other sports seems to begin anew with each generation, but baseball, that wondrous myth of twentieth century America, gets passed on like an inheritance."
~Stanley Cohen
"It is the best of all games for me. It frequently escapes from the pattern of sport and assumes the form of a virile ballet. It is purer than any dance because the actions of the players are not governed by music or crowded into a formula by a director. The movement is natural and unrehearsed and controlled only by the unexpected flight of the ball."
~Jimmy Cannon
"Baseball, like Pericles' Athens (or any other good society), is simultaneously democratic and aristocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, but the more you apply yourself, the more you enjoy it. "
~ George Will
"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona."
~ George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, 1990
"Why does everybody stand up and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when they're already there?"
~ Larry Anderson
"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it."
~ Rogers Hornsby
"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."
~ Bryant Gumbel, 1981
"With those who don't give a damn about baseball, I can only sympathize. I do not resent them. I am even willing to concede that many of them are physically clean, good to their mothers and in favor of world peace. But while the game is on, I can't think of anything to say to them."
~ Art Hill
"That's baseball, and it's my game. Y' know, you take your worries to the game, and you leave 'em there. You yell like crazy for your guys. It's good for your lungs, gives you a lift, and nobody calls the cops. Pretty girls, lots of 'em."
~ Humphrey Bogart
"Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?"
~Jim Bouton, 1988
"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem."
~ Saul Steinberg
And perhaps my favorite --
"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
~ A. Bartlett Giamatti, 'The Green Fields of the Mind,' Yale Alumni Magazine, November 1977
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