The Winter is Over

The winter is over. Well, all right, it isn't. But it feels like it. Baseball Spring Training begins this week.

For my Detroit Tigers, it begins Wednesday when their pitchers and catchers report. We're expecting 4 to 8 inches of snow here in the D that night, but you know what? It'll still feel like spring as I read about camp starting Wednesday morning. 

Most teams begin either tomorrow or Wednesday. Position players report, generally, a week from today. I gotta hand it to the Cubs, though. They're getting a heads up. Their pitchers and catchers reported yesterday while the rest of the team arrives Friday. Yes, baseball for Chicago fans began on a Sunday, and as it should. Baseball might just be a religion. It is for us true believers. After all, God created baseball.

You didn't know that? Oh, come on. The very Bible starts with, In the Big Inning. 

Actual games don't fire up until the 21st. But that's okay. Just hearing cowhide hit leather and the crack of the bat in the cages warms my heart. 

Showing the love

Go! Cubs! Go!
Go! Cubs! Go!
Hey, Chicago, Whaddaya say?
Cubs are gonna win today!

Let me tell something about going to Wrigley Field this past Sunday: The Northsiders know how to show love to their baseball team. They play this song after each Cubs win:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9XtDyDUjIU

I got your earworm going now, don't I? Maybe I'm still basking in the glow of a great if short weekend, but singing that song Sunday was right up there with listening to Sweet Caroline during the Seventh Inning Stretch at Fenway. Those of you familiar with that just went bum bum bum, didn't you?

Baseball wears tradition like that comfortable old cardigan  you can never throw away. You might have to patch it up until the day you die but you never lose your love for it, treating it almost sacredly along the way. The same with baseball. It runs through a family thicker than blood.

It's said you can't beat the classics. I'll tell you what: you can't beat baseball. An afternoon at a Cubs game reminds you of that.

Baseball bizarre

My son and I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field in Chicago yesterday, as part our stadium tour. We try to hit a new Major League Baseball venue per year. This year it was Wrigley's turn. It's a great ballpark, one the last two classic baseball stadiums left (the other being Fenway in Boston).

Not only did the Cubs win, a favorite former Tiger of mine (Nick Castellanos) have a great game, going 3-5 with two doubles to increase his MLB lead in that statistical category to 54. Yet more than that: I saw the most bizarre play I've ever seen in baseball. I still shake my head about it this morning. The Cubs' opponents, the Pittsburgh Pirates, botched an appeal play. Rather spectacularly in fact.

For the non-baseball fans out there the quick explanation is that, when the defense believes a runner missed touching a base, they may 'appeal' the play by tossing the ball to a defender, who then touches the base with his foot. If the umpire saw that the runner did indeed miss the base, the runner is ruled out on appeal. Get it?

In this case, the Pirates felt a Cubs runner missed third while scampering home. The pitcher was simply to toss the ball to the third baseman, who would catch it and touch the bag. A simple throw. Just a lob really.

The pitcher proceeded to lob it five feet over the third baseman's head.

A different Cubs runner who occupied third then sped home for another run.

I still can't wrap my head around it. How in the world does a major league player lob, soft toss, a 55 foot throw, clean over the fielder's head? Bear in mind this was from a standing still position; the pitcher wasn't fielding a ball in any way, shape, or form. He was simply standing there. It should have been the easiest play on Earth for him.

Then to make matters worse, the Pirates went on and appealed again. The third base umpire ruled safe, that the original runner, the one in question in the first place, had in fact touched the base en route to home. Talk about salt in the wound: Pittsburgh would have lost the appeal anyway, but gave Chicago a run in the process.

I chuckle incredulously even now. How does that happen at that level of play?

The Cubs, the Tribe, and the Lions

I'm happy for Cubs fans, and sad for Indians fans. Baseball has a way of playing the fates; as most of you probably know. Chicago and Cleveland respectively were the longest without a championship in their league. Now the Indians own the distinction of longest drought in the game. I was personally rooting for the Tribe. Now I content myself that, just maybe, they'll begin to get the attention that the Cubs and earlier Red Sox held for so many years.

At least the Tribe made the big show this year, and the Cubs had been the team to go the furthest without even appearing in their sport's championship. Now, unless I'm miss my guess (I'm being too lazy to try and look it up) are our own Detroit Lions. They haven't been in a Super Bowl at all, and last appeared in the NFL Championship in 1957. That's the year my parents got married. I blame them.

So the long cold winter begins. To quote Rogers Hornsby, the old baseball great for among others, the Cubs, commenting on the offseason, "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."

I hear ya Roger.