Play Ball!

Today is the day I look forward to all year long.

From the moment the last pitch is thrown in the World Series until the umpire once again hollers, “Play Ball,” I await breathlessly for the start of the new baseball season.

To me it’s when the flowers bloom once again, and when the sleepy months of winter close their doors and re-open to a promising new dawn.

It’s almost as if I, like a big old bear, curled up in my cave, I hibernate until it all begins anew.
You see, I am a baseball fan — and to me, baseball is life.

But, like a “thief in the night,” a dastardly deed was played on me by my new and most feared enemy, the villain … “Coronavirus.”

It struck quickly, forcing all of us into our own homes, locking us away from the sweet reality that used to be our lives.

And without warning, this faceless, invisible enemy destroyed the source that gave me life. Baseball players went to their homes, locked themselves away from the game — and from the enemy they couldn’t see.

With the deadly Coronaviris sneaking around, creating fear and apprehension, baseball fans are locked out of the very substance that made them whole.

For me, it was more than curling up in my favorite chair with a bowl of popcorn and my favorite drink to enjoy an evening of baseball on my TV.

Yes, that is gone, but so is much, much more!

Beyond major league baseball, there was the joy of covering high school baseball that has also been lost. And I always anticipate the start of the amateur baseball season, when young men and those into their 20’s and 30’s take to the diamond to play the game they love.

There’s nothing better than sitting in your folding chair on a star-filled night, with a slight breeze blowing the sounds and smells of the baseball season past you as young men fly through the air, throw the ball as hard as they can and dive to catch a baseball that was headed away from their outstretched arm.

This was to be a spring and summer when I sat behind a microphone describing the game to listeners and followers of their local teams. As a member of the “We Are Network,” it would have been my honor to bring the game to those who couldn’t be there.

We were planning a “preview” of the upcoming baseball season in the area and that would have been a chance to break new ground with the first “Pre-season Sports Previews,” on the We Are Network.

I admit I was looking forward to presenting the Webster Tigers attempt to win a third straight state championship after back-to-back titles the last two years. Coach Jarrod Washburn was poised to lead his team into battle for that lofty third straight championship.

Washburn is a former Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher who played for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Seattle Mariners, and Detroit Tigers over the course of a 12–year MLB career.

His son Owen Washburn is poised to be one of the returning veterans to a very talented team.

I not only recall the years when Jarrod Washburn played, but I was in attendance at several Spring Training games when Washburn was in his prime. I recall once day when I got to the San Francisco Giants park in time to watch the game and there was Washburn, on the mound for his team.

I watched him play on television in the World Series and during his career ran a column called, “Washburn Watch,” in the Burnett County Sentinel that always gave readers the statistics on how the major league pitcher had done in the past week.

Since retirement from baseball, Washburn has done much to create and insure wildlife and the outdoor environment in the area.
I look forward to seeing him again on the field, directing his Webster Tigers.

Then there’s Pete Johnson. When I left the area 12 years ago, Pete was the Grantsburg Pirates coach. He still is.
Today he’s building a little-league type complex at the Grantsburg Elementary School dedicated to former Elementary Principal Clayton Jorgensen.

Jorgensen was a civic-minded person and served on the Grantsburg Village Board, the Burnett County Board of Supervisors and many local and statewide committees. In 2004, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Wisconsin Athletic Directors Association. He was very involved in many local histories and tractor events. He passed away in November 2016.

It’s baseball men like Washburn and Johnson who make the sports so much more than a kid with a ball and bat. They go beyond the diamond to link history and life and weave it into our national pastime.

While in Minneota for 11 years, I helped promote the local amateur baseball team, “The Minneota Mudhens.” For many of those years, as a follower, reporter, photographer, game announcer, a friend of the players and President of the Mudhens Baseball Association, I pushed for a press box on the field.

For years I’d pull up a folding chair and maybe a small table and announce the players as they came to bat. My chair had an awning to keep out the ferocious rays of the afternoon sun and often the concession manager, who also sang our national anthem, would come by and refresh me with my favorite beverage.

Last fall, the new press box was finally finished. I’ve never been in it — but I’ve been told by the team manager I’d get a chance to sit in it when I returned to watch a game.

Now, there is no telling when that may be.

As the calendar page turns from March to April, there seems to be no end in sight of the demanding destroyer that’s separated me from the game I love.

There’s little recourse on television these days. My favorite sports networks try to help with replays of world series games from the 1960’s, ’70’s and ’80’s. While It’s fun to see the players I watched as a kid and a young man, it’s difficult to get enthused about this return to yesteryear.

Fox Sports has fashioned a couple of Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins games from last year for our enjoyment. I watch and I remember the days when such games were live … and I miss them all the more.

Just for old-time remembrance’s sake, here are names of players from the past that created within me a love for the game.

First of all is my favorite player, Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins. I loved Harmon because he gave me so many years of enjoyment and as one of the most sincere and honest baseball players I’ve ever watched. He always played as hard as he could, kept his mouth shut and did whatever he was asked to do.

In fact, Harmon passed on to former Minnesota Twin Torii Hunter the idea that fans shouldn’t be cheated, so when you sign an autograph, make it legible. Harmon always did that, and so did Torii.

From my younger years, I enjoyed players Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, his teammate Yogi Berra, San Francisco Giant Willie Mays, Harvey Kuenn, who took the Brewers to the World Series and of course, the great Kirby Puckett.

I once got to see Mays play in an exhibition game against the old Minneapolis Millers when I was about 15 years old. He didn’t start, but late in the game he came up as a pinch hitter and slapped a home run off Miller reliever Al Worthington, who later became a Minnesota Twin.

Mays made one kid very happy on that day.

I used to use a press pass my dad gave me as a newspaperman in Cosmos, MN and I’d hitch a ride to the game at old Metropolitan Stadium and roam the outfield, waiting to catch a home run ball. And I got one once, hit by Lenny Green.

I finally met my childhood hero, Killebrew, about 12 of 13 years ago in Fairfax, MN. They had an old-timers game and Killebrew showed up as the main celebrity.

Upon meeting him, I told him a story about how, on a July 4th afternoon, he was playing and I was listening on my radio. It was a hot day so I went into the house to take a bath and cool off. Herb Carneal was announcing the game. I told Harmon exactly what happened. “You hit a home run and I got so excited I nearly drowned.”

Harmon was a kind man and he smiled and thanked me several times for being a fan. Meeting Harmon was one of my greatest baseball moments.

Another was meeting slugger, Hank Aaron. I was working in New Ulm when the local American Legion team, led by Tom and Terry Steinbach, went to the National American Legion World Series in Yakima, WA.

After the series was over, Aaron was invited to speak at a banquet honoring the New Ulm American Legion team.

As Aaron and I sat across from each other for an interview, I was floating somewhere on a cloud as if looking down at him from above. Meeting Hank Aaron of Milwaukee and Atlanta fame was far beyond my wildest dreams.

So now, maybe you understand why I miss baseball.

It’s been what fishing and hunting is to my friend Greg Peer and so many others. It’s the enjoyment that makes life a little sweeter, year after year.

But I’m not going to give up. Instead, “I’m going to wave my homer hanky” whenever I feel like it and I’ll dream about the day it returns.

So, until the day I once again hear, “There’s a long fly ball to left field. It’s Outta Here,” I’m just going to sit back and wait — and long for the day when me and by birthday-buddy Peer can again sit at a Twin-Brewer game together, each cheering for our team.

It will happen! It’s got to happen!