I’ve looked forward to the 2016 baseball season with great anticipation, and not just the majors, but the minor leagues as well.  As I live in the Des Moines area (as some would correctly refer to as the largest small town in the world) there are no professional major league franchises here.  Hence, we have a Triple AAA affiliate baseball team: the Iowa Cubs, the minor league farm team for the Chicago Cubs.  And, that’s ok.

Though major league baseball is exciting, the feel in the stands exhilarating, there is something very special about minor league baseball. The awe and magnitude of the majors, being in a huge stadium in a sprawling metropolis is invigorating and the intensity almost sucks the air out of your lungs.  I’ve been there, done that.

But, when I think of baseball, memories of my earlier days come back. They come back from the days when baseball was truly king when it was indeed the nation’s favorite pastime.  Minor league baseball still retains the peaceful community environment reflecting the real ambiance of the game. It’s exciting and mellow at the same time. It has its own tradition.

I think back on the days when the major leagues still retained that ambiance. I think back when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were chasing Babe Ruth’s single season home run record  without the use of steroids, in fact, just the exact opposite.  Maris was smoking up to three packs of cigarettes a day when he broke the record!  Mantle was playing with massive knee injuries and pain that would have sidelined most, while looking over his shoulder at the family curse of Hodgkin’s disease (which fortunately skipped the Mick) and was still blasting balls out of the park so far they were practically landing in another time zone!

I look back on the days of sandlot baseball. I was living in Durham, North Carolina.  We had the Glendale Avenue Block team.  We didn’t have an official nickname – didn’t need one.  We just played for the love of the game.  Sometimes we kept score, sometimes we didn’t.  If we played those guys from the Washington Street team, it was serious.  It was war!  I mean, here these guys came walking onto our turf shootin’ off their battleship mouths, only to end up sinkin’ their collective rowboat asses!  It was like steeling your best girl!

Even in the early ‘60’s, we didn’t care about a kid’s color so much when it came to baseball, unlike the adults at that time. We cared about whether that kid had a fastball that could strike out that mouthy little bastard from that other team that everyone loved to hate!  It was just like the movie “Sandlot”.  In fact, we lived through that movie and its time period.

The Civil Rights Movement was roaring. The Vietnam War was beginning to erupt in our faces, eventually taking several of sandlot team mates from across America into combat from which they never returned.  It was a turbulent era.  But, as Terrance Mann from “Field of Dreams”, so brilliantly played by Alex Haley said, “Throughout all this country’s trials and tribulations, baseball has been the seam that sewed it all together”.  He was right.

I look forward to seeing the Iowa Cubs play this year. And, if the big Cubs win the World Series – so much the better!  But, as I sit in Principal Park, I’ll reminisce on all of the memories and team mates, those still with us and those that have crossed over the great divide.  I’ll think of that famous line from “Sandlot” and just smile: “You’re killin’ me Smalls!”  Then I’ll just sit back and enjoy the greatest game in the world!