Tariffs are on, then they’re off, then they’re on again. President Trump wants Canada to be his country’s 51st state. Stock markets are crashing, and job losses, price increases and a recession are almost surely around the corner.
It’s all depressing stuff, and these are potentially difficult times. Sometimes, it’s difficult to tune out all the negative noise.
But we are heading into spring. Longer days and warmer weather are here. As they say, hope springs eternal. That phrase comes to mind when the first buds of lilies of the valley sprout in our front yard.
It also comes to mind when watching spring training baseball.
As I write this Point of View article, I have a ball game on in the background. The Tampa Bay Rays are playing the Detroit Tigers at Publix Field at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Florida.
Now, I’m neither a Rays nor a Tigers fan. And unlike most of you who may read this, I’m also not a Blue Jays fan.
Instead, I am a long-suffering Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
I know. Shame on me. How un-Canadian of me during this time that our country is under attack from POTUS.
But bear with me. Here’s how it happened.
In 1972, my mother signed me up to play in the St Catharines Minor Baseball Association. To that point, it was probably the most exciting thing that had ever happened to a pudgy young me.
I grabbed my beaten-up hand-me-down baseball glove and rode my bicycle from our home at the corner of Pelham Rd. and Louth St. in west St. Catharines to Walkinshaw Park, where I learned that I had been placed on the Pirates.
It was my first experience in any kind of organized sports activity, and I loved it. I wasn’t much of a hitter, but I was a halfway decent fielder. We won some games, we lost some games, and I met kids from beyond the confines of my neighbourhood and my school.
An avid Toronto Maple Leafs fan at the time, I started following baseball. And I learned that the Pittburgh Pirates, with players like Steve Blass, Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente, had won the 1971 World Series.
Obviously, I became a fan.
I remember where I was that New Year’s Eve, too, when the news came out that my favourite player, Clemente, had died in a plane crash while delivering aid to earthquake-devastated Nicaragua. It was my first experience with the heartbreak of death.
So, when the Blue Jays arrived in 1977, I refused to switch allegiances.
Decades later, I am still a Pirates fan.
Through the years I’ve seen some great players come and go, including Andrew McCutchen, Barry Bonds before the steroids and the great Canadian-born 2004 rookie of the year Jason Bay. But I also endured twenty losing seasons in a row, the most by any professional sports team ever.
Nevertheless, every year, once the NFL season wraps up (I am also a Pittsburgh Steelers fan), there is this lull for a couple of weeks that is broken for me only by the airing of the Pirates' first spring training game. On Feb. 22, the Pirates beat Baltimore 10-5.
I love the pace and rhythm of the games as well as the sounds. The voice of Pirates play-by-play announcers Greg Brown and Joe Block are both soothing and entertaining.
I love seeing all the up-and-comers from the team’s minor league system getting a crack at playing against players with big league experience.
I love seeing the progression of the pitchers, who are limited to just one or two innings at first and slowly increase their pitch counts as their arms loosen into better shape.
And I love seeing the ball fly out of the tiny Grapefruit League stadiums off the bats of the giant millionaire athletes and into the parking lots that sit just beyond the fence.
They are all reminders that opening day is just around the corner, too.
It’s my first sign of spring; my first feeling that hope indeed does spring eternal.
