Is This Hog Heaven?.. No, It’s Allentown

Those three words I long to hear, “Pitchers and Catchers.”

This is the time of year most sports fans are grinding their teeth, either sweating out the NFL playoff or completely ignoring them and trying to find ways to weasel out of their New Year’s resolutions.

What do we have to look forward to for January? Sure, if your favorite NFL team is still in the hunt for a championship you are riding high on the football wave but for the many of us whose teams have long been eliminated, we don’t have much going on right now. The most recent list of baseball transactions was minimal (the Phillies having none). The NCAA Basketball tournament is still a month or so away. It will be a few more weeks until we can enjoy Superbowl commercials and later the NFL draft. I suppose I will decide not to watch the NFL probowl this year despite the changes made to it this season.

So that leaves us in February. Every baseball fan knows what that means. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training. It’s not much. Very little media coverage for us to absorb. Not really exciting stuff, but it just puts us that much closer to Opening Day. It’s like hearing, “Gentlemen, Start your engines!” at the Indy 500. The start of the race will soon be upon us!

Thinking back to my days of playing baseball I recall those cold February and March practices in the high school’s gymnasium. Being one of two catchers, we took the brunt of punishment while pitching tryouts commenced. If you take 15 pitchers throwing 100 pitches per workout… well it wasn’t a picnic. Add in the way that a baseball bouncing on a hard floor does not react the way soft infield dirt does. I averaged about 2-3 protective cups per season. The craziest part about it though was that I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Just the smell of a glove, the feel of a baseball in my hand brings back a better time.

A few nights ago I stumbled upon the movie, Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner; One of my favorite baseball movies out there. There is a line where Shoeless Joe Jackson asks Costner’s character, “Is this Heaven?” and Costner replies, “No, It’s Iowa.” This sums up how I feel about baseball.

Each time I step into Coca Cola Park I ask myself, “Is this Heaven?”