Springtime is all about baseball

In an 1842 poem, Alfred Lord Tennyson coined a phrase that most of us have heard or read: “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

As someone who grew up in Philadelphia, I have a different view of spring.

In my hometown, in the spring a young person’s fancy turns to thoughts of baseball.

In the city of brotherly and sisterly love, the statue of William Penn may rest at the top of City Hall, but the joy of spring training — the sounds of a fastball hitting the catcher’s mitt or the crack of the bat hitting the ball and sending it over the right field wall — rules in our minds.

I know that these days sports must often be violent, rapid and attractive to the eye.

But there is something to be said for needing time to think about strategies in games that appeal to the mind as much as the eye and can be savored as the gentle rain falling to the earth.

In the other sports, time passes quickly. Turn your head away for a minute and you miss a touchdown, goal or layup. But in baseball, time passes slowly (some would say drags, but I disagree.) I’ve lived long enough to make every moment count and not watch time whiz by.

It’s been written that baseball is a thinking person’s sport, and I agree.

Try keeping a scorecard once, and you will understand that like life, baseball requires a strategy for winning, decisions made that might determine the final outcome, the moves of a manager carefully considered in the final inning.

It may be that many sports are fast-paced to mirror the times in which we live.

But I, for one, need breaks from the speedy lives we seem to live; time to enjoy the good moments and recover from the bad ones.

Yes, there are games in which time itself seems to stand still, as when a manager walks to the mound to remove a struggling pitcher.

But I need moments in my life to consider decisions before making them.

Too much of our modern times are full of action without reflection, decisions made on the spur of the moment that can impact our futures in ways we’d rather not have happen.

We may think of sports as only recreational, but no less a thinker than Sigmund Freud thought otherwise. Freud wrote that sports can be a release from our most harmful behaviors. We can take out our aggressions by transferring them to games without actually hurting anyone. Well, I am not sure Santa Claus was not hurt when fans threw snowballs at him at an Eagles game.

I would argue that baseball has good outcomes. The players on the field may sometimes play roughly, but their goal is not to send the opponents to the hospital. Fans want their teams to win but not necessarily send the other players to trainers to see if they have suffered any brain injuries.

Perhaps it’s true that baseball is a better sport for rural areas and small towns, where its very slowness corresponds to life on the farm or in the village. Perhaps that’s why so many still love baseball because it reminds of slower times when we could sit down long enough to wait for the outcome.

Face it, baseball is a game that mirrors life. You fail more than you win. Where else can you make an out seven out of 10 times and still be considered successful? Where else can you vent your anger at those who are supposed to be in control, the umpires, and not be thrown out? Where else can you watch a homer hit in the last of the ninth inning to win?

And where else as a child can you used a sawed-off broomstick handle and tennis ball cut in half to play a game with neighborhood kids on Samson Street in West Philadelphia?

John C. Morgan is a writer who grew up in Philadelphia and still can name the starting infield for the Philadelphia Whiz Kids. His column appears weekly at readingeagle.com.