Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That’s why they say, “the game is never over until the last man is out.” Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.
—W. P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe (1982)
If you can take away anything from the passage above from Shoeless Joe, the book from W.P. Kinsella that was later adapted as the film Field of Dreams, I hope it is the sense of hope and possibility that exists in the game of baseball. Even when things look bleak, as he writes, anything is possible until the last man is out. To see your team flounder and stumble through the early innings of game only to somehow get it together and rebound to win in the final inning is one of the great thrills of the game. Americans love a great comeback. And in this country right now, that sense of the hope and possibility of a comeback is needed more than ever.
I think that’s why today’s Opening Day for Major League Baseball takes on more weight than in many previous years. It marks a return to some form of normalcy, a bond to our collective past, one of the few that seems immune to the historical erasure taking place.
I am replaying a post that was written for the beginning of spring training in 2019. It pretty much sums up with the feeling and need for the game in stressful times that I described above. Plus, I get to show off the terrific painted baseball gloves of Sean Kane again. I have also added an ethereal performance of Take Me Out to the Ballgame from Harpo Marx on the I Love Lucy show from May of 1955. It thrills me each time I hear him play this.
[From 2019]
The feeling is in the air again and brings back sensory memories. Green grass smell. Bright sun light and brown earth. The vocal patter of the players. The plunk of a ball entering a mitt. The sound of bat on ball, sometimes a dull thunk and sometimes a resounding crack that makes you turn your head to see the flight of the ball.
And the path of that hard hit ball in the air is sometimes a majestic arc that immediately ignites a sense of wonder and a brief glimpse of some innate understanding of physics that evades us at all other times.
Aaah, baseball has returned.
First spring training games start today and to be honest, I am a little more giddy than normal this year. It just feels like we need the game to be bigger and even more transcendent in these times. It needs to be a balm, a healing agent for what ails us. As a longtime symbolic shadow of this country, the game has served that purpose in the past and I have hopes it can do so again.
So, play ball. Please.
I am showing some of the work of Sean Kane, an artist who works painting baseball gloves, especially those beautiful vintage gloves that seem like little more than fat work gloves. If you’ve ever tried to play with one of those, you have greater appreciation for the players of earlier days and what they could do with those gloves.
Anyway, I saw his work and was immediately smitten. Just gorgeous stuff, especially for those of us with a soft spot for the history of the game. One of my favorites is the one from the Cuban player Martin Dihigo who played his career in the Negro Leagues and other leagues in Latin America.
And that Jackie Robinson glove, inside and out, and the Casey at the Bat triptych at the top are both masterpieces! Grand slams!
You can see much more of his work at his site, Sean Kane Baseball Art, by clicking here.
Play ball!






















Part of the charm of baseball for me are its mythic elements, the stories that captured my imagination as a kid. For instance, Babe Ruth allegedly pointing to the centerfield fence to call his home run. Or Satchel Paige supposedly throwing strikes using a single gum wrapper laid on home plate as the strike zone. Willie Mays’ fabled but very real over the shoulder catch. And Jackie Robinson stealing home in the World Series. Too many more to mention here.