Spring starts on Saturday
A probably too personal essay on baseball and being jewish and my dad
Good news for the cold and weary: Spring starts on Saturday! No, not the official definition (Mar 19), the groundhog’s prediction (g-d knows when this actually is), Aires season (Mar 21), or my usual seasonal boundary (each season is exactly 3 months long, with other seasonal boundaries on June, Sept, Dec 1st), no. Spring starts exactly the moment that the first pitch of Mets spring training gets thrown, and I will recognize no other definition, short of, maybe, the first “it’s outta here”, but that’s ideally within a few hours of that first pitch.
This spring definition doesn’t rely on the sun or the moon, and the only migratory birds that you have to watch for are the Cardinals and the Blue Jays rolling up to their stadiums, a process that all the climate change in the world won’t move a second.
This spring definition is also leaves no room for disappointment (that’s the rest of the season). On this first day of spring, you’re warm no matter the weather. No matter how deep into New England you’ve embedded yourself, the second Gary Cohen’s voice welcomes you to another season, it’s warm. You’re not at a desk, or in the car, or in class. It’s 78 degrees, it’s sunny, and you’re suddenly 7 again, basking in the Florida sun next to your dad and holding all the stadium popcorn you can eat. The clouds don’t dare to show up, and the sun and the energy around you thaw parts of you unused in months. Parts you think you hate as you wish for snow accumulations, but that come alive and spread calm those first warm rays of March regardless.
Springtime metaphors for rebirth and optimism are as abundant as they are cliché, but that doesn’t make them hit any less hard or feel any less good. Spring is here. This is the year. Even better, for the next month the losses don’t count (the injuries still do), the young guns get their moment in the spotlight, and optimism is the drug of choice. The usual “he’s a bum, take him out” is replaced with “it’s finally fucking March, and I am watching actual baseball”. It’s Mets season. Winter is over.
The Torah says that being Jewish is matrilineal, and while there’s no old book confirming it, I believe that being a Mets fan can only be patrilineal. The two have a lot in common, too, I think. Neither group can catch a break much. Both have a little enclave in New York City where they’re only kind of the outsiders, or you can at least walk down the street and see a guy in your uniform somewhat often, unlike basically everywhere else. Both have a disproportionate density of off-beat funny dudes, and even share a tradition of listening to a guy named Cohen preach at them a few times a week.
And sure, both have their fair share of die hards that are later in life converts, but ask any Mets fan why they subject themselves to 162 nights of torture per year, and you get a similar answer to asking a Jew why he’s in synagogue on Rosh Hashana. There’s never really a lucid answer, just a vague gesturing that it’s something you just have to do. Your dad dragged you here as a kid and now come hell or high water you wouldn’t miss it for a second, even if you can’t figure out why. Just something deep inside that heeds that call, be it shofar or cowbell. A day that to most of the world is some Tuesday means so much that it’s arrival is all-consuming. The once-a-years dig our their kippahs and/or Mets hats and acknowledge holiness of the day. The humble super-fan and the “I was raised a mets fan but now I’m an a-sports-ist” sit side by side in the pews1 and worship the reverence of the day as equals in joy and reverence.
The first day of spring and Rosh Hashana make it feel like like this year, finally this g-d damned year, it’s all possible. Rebirth, enlightenment, the messiah, peace in the middle east, another ‘86, just being a better person, a good pitching squad. Whatever you believe in it’s possible. Hope springs eternal. This is the year. There’s no stress at work, no taxes, just 162 chances to win a baseball game, minus the few that life rudely interrupts your viewing of.
More important than the year forward, though, is the year left behind. Who if by fire? Not me, not this time, not today. Who if by patellar tendon tear? Not Diaz, not 2024. We made it through last year. This no longer is the year it all fell apart, but the year that it’s all going to come together. Rebirth and triumph.
Judaism and the Mets, I hope in my heart, will both go on forever. I, at least, can’t imagine a life not dictated by their ebbs and flows. Truly impossible to make plans in September or October around them. Both are relentless and unforgiving, too. Both can really break you if you’re not careful. “Prayer can do anything” but when you’re 7 years old praying that you beat the Yankees in the subway world series this year, because you’re not quite old enough to yell at the TV yet, you can learn two life lessons at once. Most of the time you lose, most of the time your prayer doesn’t do shit, and just because everything is set up to go perfectly doesn’t mean it will. Many people, probably wisely, realize this early and give up. Buy a Yankees hat, become an atheist. Some of us keep our yamukahs and Mets hats. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe there’s some ancient wisdom about accepting life’s trials being bestowed upon you, maybe you’re just a masochist and don’t realize it.
The most important thing about the first day of spring training is that my dad made it there. Not necessarily just physically, to Florida, where we went every year for a decade and will go again in a few weeks, but just that the two of us get another crack at seeing the boys win it all together. Against all odds, it seems at times, another chance. Near-strokes and falls and memory problems that scare the shit out of the both of you in ways you’ll never admit don’t hold a candle to the peaceful, unbridled optimism of the timelessness of the the first crack of the bat of spring. Everyone is young and healthy and can take on the world. I don’t know how I’ll survive a baseball game, forget the rest of my life, without being able to text my dad through the whole thing and that scares the hell out of me, but on every text counting down to next Saturday re-assures me that no, I don’t have to worry about that yet. There is no time and opening day will go on forever and whenever you need the physical and spiritual warmth of sitting out at a late summer evening game at Citi field, sipping a beer together, it will be there. Well, maybe not forever, but you get one more year, and right now that feels like manna from the heavens and that’s all you need. It’s a horrible and haunting and beautiful thing to know that right now is the best something will ever be, but knowing that doesn’t stop it from being true. Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez are the best booth sports has ever seen. There will never be as good a person to watch a baseball game with as my dad. I’ll have neither of these forever, but for right now, in 5 days, I get to have them again. What feels routine on July 1st and impossible on December 1st is coming once again, and win or lose, it’s going to be perfect. This is the year. October is just 7 short months away and by hook or by crook we’re gonna make it there.
Happy (almost) spring. I’ve been in a sorta weird place recently, but trees are budding, snow forecasts are waning, and most importantly, the New York Mets play baseball in less than a week. It will all be okay, and let’s (fucking) go Mets.
I will never forgive who renamed the perfectly named Mets spring training “traditions field” to something else.
This post left me with a feeling I haven’t had in years, maybe in forever. I actually want to watch a baseball game??
banger