It’s Spring & The “Crack Of The Bat” Beckons

Opinion/Sports

By Dave Scott, 3-22-24

The good news is this is the first week of spring and the even better news is that baseball season officially opens in the U.S. next week Thursday, March 28.

There’s something energizing about walking into a baseball park on a warm spring day whether it’s a major league or minor league stadium, a little league or high school field.

There’s the smell of freshly mown grass, the polite crowd filing into their seats, the chatter of the players warming up on the field, vendors hawking hot dogs and peanuts, excited autograph-seeking kids, and folks standing for the national anthem. It’s inspirational and comforting. The atmosphere confirms it’s going to be a very good day.

When the umpire yells “Play Ball!” you can forget about elections, Republicans, Democrats, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the chaotic border, inflation, crime, the fentanyl epidemic, paying your neighbors’ college loans, and more. There are no Democrats or Republicans at the ballpark, just baseball fans united in their passion for America’s pastime.

While working and living in Paris and Brussels in the early and mid-1980s and late 1990s, I read a column headlined: “The crack of the bat” in the Paris-based Herald Tribune that expressed my sentiments as well as fellow American expatriates who missed the game. Here’s an excerpt:

No, a Yank can’t describe to a Frenchman

The rasp of an umpire’s call

The continuing charms of statistics

Changing hist’ry with each strike and ball

Nor the self-conscious jog of the slugger

Rounding third with the tip of his hat

Nor the half-smothered grace of a hook slide

Nor the sound of the crack of a bat.

Initially written in the 1960s by Herald Tribune sports editor Dick Roraback, the column ran annually and maybe still does. Read it all at: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/31/sports/IHT-the-crack-of-the-bat.html.

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What! What? MLB says opening day was played between the Dodgers and Padres Wednesday, March 20 in Seoul, South Korea. SOUTH KOREA? What the …..?

Obviously it’s time to boot current Commissioner Rob Manfred, the guy who moved the 2021 All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver to protest black voting discrimination that never existed. Moving the All Star game just three months before it was to be played cost Atlanta’s black-owned businesses millions of dollars and exposed Manfred and the Delta and Coke HQ nitwits that backed him as the pandering idiots they are.

In 1951 the USSR under Joseph Stalin claimed it invented the game? In addition to his other sacrilegious antics, Manfred’s changes to the game such as ghost runners, time clocks, etc. are making the game so unrecognizable that even Stalin wouldn’t lay claim to it if he were still around.

Oh, and no matter what Manfred proclaims, the real opening day is in North America Thursday, March 28, when all 30 clubs are scheduled to play.

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An Unbreakable Baseball Record: There are a handful of baseball records that knowledgeable fans of the game say will never be equaled much less broken. Those include Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, Cy Young’s 511 career pitching victories, and Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games played.

The one I’m most convinced is unreachable is held by Cincinnati lefthander Johnny Vandermeer, who on June 11 and 15, 1938 at age 23, pitched back-to-back no-hitters.

I met Vandermeer when I was a student at Tampa’s Plant High School. His daughter, Evelyn, was a classmate and invited me to visit their house. I eagerly accepted and chatted with the amiable minor league Tampa Tarpons manager as he lounged in a backyard hammock. At the time Vandermeer managed both Pete Rose and Lee May who were members of that 1961 Tarpons team.

On one wall of the den of their modest house was a huge photo of Vandermeer throwing the last pitch in that second game against the Brooklyn Dodgers to Leo Durocher to win his second straight no-hitter. Durocher flied out. That second game the Dodgers’ Ebbets Field was its first night game under the stadium’s newly-installed lights. After that second no-hitter Vandermeer was named honorary mayor of Tampa, where the Reds held spring training.

To break his record a pitcher would have to throw three consecutive no-hitters. It’ll never happen. It’ll probably never be equaled. My pal American Spectator writer Larry Thornberry agrees saying “In today’s game even pitching three complete games in a row would be out of reach.”

Vandermeer died in Tampa at 82 in 1997 and was buried holding a baseball in his left hand.

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Speaking Of The Tampa Tarpons: Last year (2023} Rachel Balkovec was named the manager of the Tampa Tarpons, the Yankees’ Low-A affiliate, making her the first full-time female manager in the history of affiliated baseball at the Major or Minor League levels, an impressive baseball first.

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Baseball Coming To Its Senses: Like Commissioner Manfred, Gabe Kapler is a misguided whacko who managed the San Francisco Giants and took political wokeness to another level.

Kapler refused to take the field when the national anthem was played in the wake of the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. “I don’t plan on coming out for the anthem going forward until I feel like there’s a better direction for our country,” he said at the time.

That has all changed in San Francisco, of all places. Kapler is gone and new manager, Bob Melvin has reversed the woke nonsense. “It has nothing to do with whatever happened in the past or whatever, it’s just something I embrace,” said new manager Melvin, who is rightly demanding that all his players stand for the national anthem.

Keep in mind, San Francisco is where disrespect for the national anthem all began. Colin Kaepernick, a left-wing ideologue who played for the NFL’s 49ers, began kneeling during the national anthem in September 2016 to protest alleged police brutality and so-called racial oppression — while playing under a $114,000,000 contract.

It must take a lot of practice even for a disgruntled America hater to do such a thing, but $114 million probably provides a comforting “who cares what anybody thinks” attitude.

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And Speaking Of Larry Thornberry: A few weeks ago I wrote a piece headlined: “You Might Be A Democrat If…” a takeoff of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s popular “You Might Be A Redneck If…” books.

I wasn’t the first person to do this, substituting Democrats for rednecks. Tampa Plant High School pal and American Spectator writer Larry Thornberry informed me that he penned a similar piece Oct. 19, 2020. I read them and Larry’s stand up pretty well three and a half years later.

In his 2020 piece https://spectator.org/you-might-be-a-democrat/ Larry suggested that folks who weren’t sure of which political party they identify with should use them as a test before November to clear things up. Here are some of my favorites plucked from Larry’s clever list:

If you believe Buffy and Skylar should be able to idle at university for years in order to earn a degree in vegetarian studies at taxpayer expense, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe Donald Trump is a racist and Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe the COVID virus spreads promiscuously at church services but not during urban riots, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe police officers should be treated as criminals and criminals treated as victims, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe the recent slight warming of the planet is a threat to our very existence rather than just part of the up-and-down cycles that have occurred as long as the planet has existed, and that somehow politicians and bureaucrats could devise a planetary thermostat so that all parts of Earth will be at the proper temperature, you might be a Democrat.
If you wish to abolish police and replace them with social workers, psychotherapists, and yoga instructors, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe that “endangered” worms, bugs, and plants should be saved at all cost, but unborn human children are expendable, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe small business owners should be obliged to pay a 16-year-old $600 a week ($15 times 40) to sweep the floors, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe men and women are interchangeable, just undifferentiated persons, and that women make just as good warriors as men, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe felons, who can’t be bothered to obey the law, should vote to determine who makes and administers those laws, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe wind and solar can replace fossil fuels as a reliable and relatively inexpensive source of energy, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe Black Lives Matter, not the unassailable sentiment but the Marxist organization, really just wants equity between the races rather than revolution, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe the United Nations is a serious organization that has promoted world peace and its resolutions carry more weight than a note passed in study hall, you might be a Democrat.
If you believe blocking roads, throwing rocks and bottles at police and civilians, starting fires, looting, and intimidating anyone you don’t think shares your mania is “mostly peaceful protest,” you might be a Democrat.