Something Springs Eternal

We can feel it in the air. No doubt about it. The chill is gone, and it’s been replaced by the mild breezes that announce the arrival of spring. Gardeners take note of the first crocuses and tulips pushing their way up through the soggy earth, and sports fans turn their attention south to Florida and Arizona where cowhide spheres are flung into leather gloves and wooden bats whack balls over the fences. Yes, baseball, once our national pastime, is once again preparing to launch the 2016 season. The teams are training in warmer climes, playing spring training games in the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues before officially beginning the Major League season in April.

This is a time of great optimism. No one has a lost a game. Every team is in first place. (Of course, every team is also in last place, but we don’t mention that - certainly not in March.) Each manager looks over his roster and thinks, “This could be the year.” Even the Chicago Cubs’ manager, Joe Maddon thinks this, and many experts agree with him, even if the Chicago Cubs haven’t won a championship since 1908. Who says this can’t be the year to end the longest drought in professional sports? Absolutely, something springs eternal this time of year. We can excuse long-suffering Cub fans if they can’t quite remember what it is.

Of course, some managers are a bit less optimistic than others. When Casey Stengel looked over his squad of has-beens and misfits that constituted the New York Mets of 1962, he couldn’t help asking “Can anyone here play this game?” His doubts were unfortunately confirmed when the team went on to set records for futility that year. This didn’t upset Casey too much. In fact, he was shrewd enough to master the art of selling a bad product to the public. He had an excuse ready after each loss – “The uniforms are too tight.” He was honest about the shortcomings of some his twenty-year-old prospects: “See that fella over there? He has a chance to be a star in ten years. That other fella over there?  In ten years he’s got a chance to be 30.”

Now Casey wasn’t always the manager of a losing club. He managed the powerful New York Yankees to several championships in the 1950’s and 60’s, and he could handle winning with the same aplomb as he handled losing. When you have a winning club, many of the players are established veterans with great talent. Some of them may not think they need to listen to a wizened, crotchety, old manager tell them how to play a game that, in their minds, they have already mastered. One day Casey was trying to teach his young star Mickey Mantle how to play balls hit off the right field wall in Boston’s Fenway Park. Mantle asked, “How do you know so much about it? Did you used to play this game?” Casey: “Yeah I used to play this game. You think I was born in a dugout at the age of 70 trying to manage guys like you?”

Yes, Casey had a way of putting guys in their place. He had seen it all. Now, that doesn’t mean that he was flawless. He was known to make a mistake occasionally. There was the time when he told his players to “line up in alphabetical order according to your height.” Or maybe that wasn’t a mistake. Casey liked to keep his team a little off-balance. It didn’t hurt if they thought their manager was a little off-balance too. And with Casey you were never sure if his comments were impromptu or calculated. He was once asked what the secret was to being a good manager. He replied, “Keeping the guys who hate you away from the ones who are still undecided.”

Casey didn’t hesitate to ride some of his players now and then if he thought they needed it, but he didn’t like others to criticize them too much. His catcher, the great Yogi Berra, had a reputation as a kind of idiot/savant. Yogi would utter statements that were literally nonsensical but seemed to have some essential wisdom contained within them. For example, when referring to a popular, local restaurant, he said, “It’s so crowded, nobody goes there anymore.” And when asked if he was going to attend the funeral of an old ballplayer, he offered this comment: “Sure, always go to the funeral of other folks, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” Because of these observations, some people considered Yogi rather dim and laughable. Casey didn’t like this: “Some folks think Mr. Berra is a funny guy. He’s got a beautiful wife, money in the bank, and he plays golf with millionaires. What’s so damn funny about that?”

Now, I didn’t intend that this column would be an essay on Casey Stengel, but baseball is full of characters like Casey and Yogi. Maybe it’s because, even though it’s a team sport, the individual is always front and center. It’s the batter standing in against the pitcher. When one succeeds or one fails, it is visible to all. When the ball is hit to the infielder, he either makes the play or he doesn’t. Everyone sees it. In football, our current national obsession, the player is hidden behind a uniform of bulky, protective equipment. Sure we can see a player drop a pass, but if a player misses a block, who notices? The act is obscured by a pile of 300-pound lineman falling over each other.

Yes, in baseball you are exposed. It takes a substantial degree of fortitude to strike out three times in four appearances at the plate, and come back for more the next day. Even the best hitter fails to get a hit 70 % of the time, and when the pitcher gives up a game-winning home run, it’s a long walk back to the showers. So spring training isn’t only about honing baseball skills. It’s also about readying oneself psychologically to face the pressures of a new season. But it remains an optimistic time. Each team thinks they can do it. They can succeed. They can be the last team standing in the fall. They think this way, because it is a time of hope. That’s what springs eternal this time of year.