Exhibition games have been ongoing in ballparks across Florida and Arizona since February—the Grapefruit League and the Cactus League, respectively—spreading that warm weather feeling to TV sets and computer screens up north.
Spring training starts before it’s even spring. Maybe that’s why baseball is so fiercely associated with the end of winter. When it feels that the cold and the dark have been with us too long, and baseball is the light ahead.
The game is oftentimes revered as deep and complex. Baseball, the Ken Burns documentary, was praised as “rich in drama, irresistible as nostalgia, and…an instructive window into our national psychology.” Even so, some of us enjoy the game for its simplicity, particularly if, like me, your basic knowledge was fine-tuned on a video version you played with your son.
There are times when I am comfortably wedged in the stadium seating, and my gaze drifts to the outfield, lovely and green and where I can stare, as if it’s a saltwater aquarium, gently restful to the eyes. Watching the Mets play the Houston Astros on an incredibly temperate and cloudless Sunday afternoon in Port St. Lucie, Florida, there was just such an opportunity for my thoughts to wander. Which is a long way of explaining how the comedian, Lou Costello, crossed my mind.
Lou Costello (1906-1959) was a former vaudevillian and a favorite son of Paterson, NJ (where, like Lou Costello, I was born). There, he’s been memorialized with a statue; his likeness wears a suit and bowler hat, one hand casually in his pocket and the other holding a baseball bat. These days, if the comedian is remembered at all outside the city, it’s for his teamwork with Bud Abbott. The duo started working together in 1935, doing radio and film. Despite their immense popularity (they sold $85 million in war bonds on a 1942 cross-country tour), their careers waned by the 1950s.
And yet, as Abbott and Costello, they’re still known to us—for the routine that first aired on radio in 1938, one the pair referred to simply as “baseball.” It’s on an endless loop at The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and if you can’t make the trip to Cooperstown, NY this year, you’ll miss the southern tip of Lake Otsego, and all the region has to offer, but you can still catch the comedy sketch more widely known as “Who’s on First?” thanks to YouTube.
The film reel is carefree and lighthearted. Like spring itself.
Especially fun fact: a few years back, Chin-Lung Hu was an infielder with the LA Dodgers, and, as you might imagine, Major League Baseball was ablaze with puns. With his long-awaited single, one commentator had the glorious opportunity to announce—say it with me—“Hu’s on first!” All the glee of a past generation, refreshed. A smooth, full circle landing.
Episode Notes
Because spring training heralds spring…
This week’s music
Mixing it up a little with the seasons, but that’s what happens with baseball. It’s not a game that’s ever measured in time.
"The Boys Of Summer" by Don Henley (on Spotify and Amazon Music)
Just One More Thing
Tell me all your thoughts on spring.
You've inspired me to share MY favorite ee cummings poem about springtime: https://cummings.ee/book/and/poem/and-seven-poems-vii/