That offseason feeling

By John Pierce

Perhaps the late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti said it best: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone.”

However, the baseball season goes well into the fall now. It is the dormancy of winter that makes fans yearn for the crack of the bat and the pop of leather.

Or maybe the late Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby put it better: “People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

For me, and many others, it is simple enough to say, “I miss baseball.”

There are specific aspects of the national pastime, however, that leave me looking forward to Opening Day.

I will miss seeing the “regulars” at the Turner Field: Norman, Darrell, Tommy, Dan, Chief and others.

I miss the staff welcoming us to Braves Country: Gary, Debora, Herman, Nate, Mike, Reggie, Lola, Stella and others.

I miss running into the old Braves players who can’t stay away from the action either. And spotting proud parents of current players.

I miss hearing beer vendor/psychologist Warren shouting “Hot out here!” on a cold, breezy April night at the Ted.

I miss singing the national anthem, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Devil Went Down to Georgia” (even though I liked “Thank God, I’m a Country Boy” better) — and, sometimes, Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee” if there is a delay late in the game.

I miss the sight and feel of a white official Major League baseball with its 108 red stitches leaving the batting cage and sailing some 350 feet into the outfield stands — and sometimes into my glove.

I miss chopping and cheering — and seeing my friend Marshall drawing wide attention with his neon tomahawk.

I miss baseball.

Spring training is the short-term goal. But more is needed.

April 8 — here we come.

(This photo of historic Engel Stadium in Chattanooga, where much of "42" was filmed, is from a visit there on the day the movie opened. It conveys the "empty feeling" better than any photo I have of Turner Field.)