“You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”  ~Jim Bouton Few things affect me like the sweet sound of baseball on the radio.

Heading over to the university to teach this morning, the unmistakable signs of spring were all around me.  The plum trees bursting with cotton candy colored pink tufts, the carpets of wild mustard in the vineyards and the chartreuse buds on the trees are all reminders that the cold, wet, days of winter will soon give way to warm sunshine.  And yet, despite the natural splendor that surrounded me, there was something else that awoke that visceral sense that spring is on the way.

I turned on the radio and heard the wonderfully deep melodic tones of Jon Miller and Duane Kuiper calling the Giants first Cactus League game. The effect was immediate.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, sensory memory.  With just one sound I was transported back to a time when life seemed simpler; when the only thing that mattered was who was coming up to bat, who was warming up in the bullpen and where, oh where, was the guy with the hot dogs?

For a brief moment it was 1969.  I was sitting beside my grandpa watching our beloved New York Mets, my glove in hand.  I heard the sound of planes pierce the air above Shea Stadium.  The hot dog vendors shouted out their wares in thick New York accents. “Hey, hot dawgs heeeeah.”   Cleon Jones, Ron Swoboda and Tommie Agee warm up in the outfield.  In the infield, Ed Kranpool, Ken Boswell, Wayne Garrett and Grandpa’s favorite, Bud Harrelson, play catch.  With Tom “Terrific” on the mound and Jerry Grote behind the dish, all was right with the world.

Buried deep in the recesses of our brain memory lurks.  A smell, a sound, a sight brings us back, transporting us like a time travel machine.  It can be a magical ride and on this spectacular day smothered in sunshine I am grateful.

The game of baseball reminds me to slow down, to relax and enjoy the sunshine.  It is green grass, the crack of the bat and a boy with a glove in his hand hoping for a foul ball.  It’s Dads (and Moms) and sons playing catch, it’s Opening Day when everyone is in first place and the last game of the season when winter seems long and dark and empty and we all say “wait ‘til next year”.   It’s the memory of Grandpa Basili who was my hero.  An Italian immigrant, he taught me about passion through his love of sport.

Perhaps you have a baseball story you would like to share.  What are your memories?  When you board the time travel machine, where do you go?

Spring training has begun.   Giants’ baseball is on the radio.  The wait is finally over.  Can spring be far behind?