Baseball is an odd game.
For baseball fans, a pilgrimage to Arizona or Florida has become a perennial rite of spring, not to play golf or bake on the beach, but to spend a week at the ballpark cheering for their favorite Major League team. But there, except for a select few who play professionally, it can all pretty much end. My Hal Lanier model glove is still with me, stuck above a coat rack along with scarves and purses my wife no longer wears or uses. Now and then, I run across the glove, and when I do, I always remember how much I once loved to play ball. As the years have passed, I find that my thoughts return less and less to those times of youth when summers seemed as long as years and baseball seemed as vital as romance.