Baseball on a snowy day … baseball every day
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
— Rogers Hornsby
MIKE BURKE
Allegany Radio Corporation Sports
Tuesday was certainly a good day for that.
Yes, it snowed on Tuesday, we all know that; and it’s on days like this one that it really hits home the hardest. You are aware to your core of just how far we really are from the next baseball season.
Technically, we are closer now to the next season than we’ve been at any point since the Washington Nationals recorded the final out of their World Series championship back on October 30. But as that was 71 long days ago, there remain 79 longer days until Opening Day. But who’s counting?
Any baseball fan worth his weight in rosin is counting, that’s who.
And, as the fate of the Baseball Gods would have it (and they can be a sarcastic bunch on snowy January days, those Baseball Gods), in the midst of same channel surfing between bites of a cold ham sandwich, there on a MASN Sports baseball classics replay was the Orioles game from Saturday, July 15, 1989 (I know, who remembers days and dates from 30 years ago, right? Ask a baseball fan …).
That was the game when young Mike Devereaux, in his first year as a big-league starter, yanked a two-run, game-winning home run down the left-field line and through the fair pole at grand old Memorial Stadium to cap a four-run ninth-inning rally and give the Orioles an 11-9 win over the then-California Angels.
Every Orioles fan who was around then remembers that game as though it were yesterday. But how long ago was it, really? The losing pitcher for the Angels that night was Bryan Harvey (although Bob McClure gave up the home run to Devereaux). That would be the same Bryan Harvey who enjoyed a successful big league career and whose son, Hunter Harvey, currently pitches for the Orioles.
The 1989 season was one of the most magical seasons in Orioles history. It was called the “Why Not?” season because of all the improbable wins the young Orioles, who had come out of nowhere after a 108-loss season, pulled out of their hats, with the “Fair or Foul” game of July 15 being the most thrilling one.
Memorial Stadium exploded that night. It went absolutely bonkers, as the 47,000 fans poured their hearts and their lungs into the humid Chesapeake Bay air in reviving moments past from when the place was known as The World’s Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum.
In fact, the Orioles had such a good time winning on late-inning magic on Saturday night, they went out and did it again on Sunday afternoon, scoring the game-winning run in the bottom of the 11th on a double by Mickey Tettleton that was again barely fair, this time down the right-field line, and then barely scored Cal Ripken from first on a damp, overcast, blue-gray afternoon, the likes of which were so perfect in our glorious home on East 33rd Street in the splendid neighborhood of Waverly.
I can feel the humidity, I can smell the cigar smoke and the stale popcorn. I can still remember high-fiving the man who was sitting beside me. I can taste the beer and, yes, “Ain’t the beer cold!” … And then I look out the window.
That’s baseball for you. As A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote in “The Green Fields of the Mind” essay, “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the 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.
“You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.”
Well, I gotta tell ya, Bart. It’s even worse on January 7, a Tuesday of snow and dead branches and ice-covered leaf-clogged drains and slick streets.
Come back, summer. Come back, baseball … It is, after all, a way of life. There must be baseball wherever we go, be it television or radio, because the rhythm of the game and the rhythm of the everyday is something we depend on and need. I, frankly, feel uncomfortable without it.
Yet it remains Tuesday, and it’s bright and still, barren and cold. There is nothing beautiful about it. This isn’t Connecticut, I’m not Bing Crosby and this is ain’t no white Christmas.
Pitchers and catchers report in 34 days. But who’s counting?
Mike Burke writes about sports for Allegany Radio and Pikewood Digital. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s County Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984. He was the sports editor of the Times-News for nearly 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @MikeBurkeMDT