is this punk rock?

What it means to me this year

While I was off for the last week, a question kept coming back to me: How do I talk about Opening Day this year? When the world is at war, when the farms are in crisis, when communities are reeling and each file and report seems determined to be a little more horrifying than the last — how do we open the door with a smile and greet our old friend baseball? 

Was it a blissful winter for anyone? I suspect that it was not. 

I think about these things on Opening Day. Every Opening Day. Maybe it’s the new start, or the 0-0 records. This is my New Year, my Maundy Thursday (almost literally). I breathe in spring and breathe out winter in a whispered prayer to make all things new, for peace on earth, goodwill toward men.  

Baseball has always had a touch of the mystical, for me.

We all find different hues of baseball’s spectrum to make our own. If you’re still deciding, you’re welcome to borrow mine until you find one that suits you better: I will open that door and welcome my old friend baseball — tears still in my eyes, shaking my head a little, not really able to find the words. 

I will invite it in, and we will sit for a few hours. The chalk lines and crisp white bases will remind us that there is order; the impossibly green grass will hum of beauty. I will look up and around, and hear the crowd’s roar, which translates to: not all overwhelming things are bad.

I will make communion of hot dogs and brethren of bleacher-mates. I will sing our peanut-and-Cracker Jack hymns, standing and sitting at the appropriate times — not to worship the sport, but to let it tap me on the shoulder and remind me of the goodness that is still in so many of us. So many of you (and in me, too).

So how do I talk about Opening Day this year? Like I speak of old friends, of romance and liturgy, of courage and community. Not in ignorance of the hard winter, but in steadfast defiance of it.