The Men Who Saved Baseball and other baseball stories debuts one week from today! Remember, if you would live in the greater Winchester area and would like a signed copy, please message me and I will be sure to order a copy for you.

The vignette that follows is not included in The Men Who Saved Baseball for the very good reason that I wrote it after the book was assembled and submitted for publication! So for the moment, think of me as the guy at Costco standing there with some really expensive toothpicked cheese and consider the below a free sample.

***

I happened by our local ballpark recently on a gray, damp day that is not unusual for January here in the Mid-Atlantic. Mother Nature could not make up her mind whether to simply hang her clouds low or just go ahead and get foggy. Nor could she make up her mind whether to full-out rain or simply drizzle, and so she vacillated between the two.

Having poured throughout the night, the all-dirt diamond glistened like the actual jewel. It had rained so hard that even the outfield sported puddles to go along with the universal pools around first base, in front of the rubber, and, of course, the right handed batter’s box. Still, I was called to pull over, get out of my car, and contemplate this soggy scene through the backstop fencing. As I peered through the chain link and the rain, I had the sense that this ballfield was quietly waiting.

Hibernating might be a better word than waiting. Having fattened itself on last summer’s joy, it was simply in a hazy slumber knowing it would grow vital again on next summer’s hopes and heroics.

As I gaze, I don’t see any ballplayers out there in the field, only Robert Frost emerging from the wood on a snowy evening to stand nearby and look out over that diamond with me. Frost was a big baseball fan, and a pretty fair ballplayer in his youth. We strike up a wordless conversation, then nod to one another when I head back to my car and he heads off to . . . a horse-drawn sleigh, I suppose.

I turn the windshield wipers up a notch as Mother Nature seems to be leaning more towards rain than drizzle at the moment, but I drive off into a much brighter day.