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Winter has passed, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
This is a definition of baseball I wrote in 1955. It appeared first as an editorial in the Sporting News.
Since then it's been in many books, magazines, and anthologies.
Now a lot of things have changed about baseball since 1955, but I feel the spirit of the game remains the same.
I hope you'll agree with me about what baseball is.
Baseball is a president tossing out the first ball of the season, and a pudgy schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout.
That's baseball. And so is a big fat guy with a bulbous nose running home one of his 714 home runs.
There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Hannes Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago.
That's baseball. And so is a scout reporting that a 16-year-old Sandlot pitcher in Cheyenne is a coming Walter Johnson.
Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex, a game of inches.
Every skill is measured, every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered, or booed, and then becomes a statistic.
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag.
The creed is a rule book, and color merely something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.
Baseball is a rookie. His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream.
It's a veteran, too. A tired old man of 35 hoping that those aching muscles can pull him through another sweltering August and September.
Nicknames of baseball, names like Zeke and Pye and Kaikai and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.
Baseball is a clear cool eyes of Rogers Hornsby, the flashing spikes of Ty Cobb and an overage pixie named Rabbit Mirandil.
Baseball, just a game, as simple as a ball and bat, yet as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes.
It's a sport, business, sometimes even religion.
Why, the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch and then dashing off to play stickball in the streets with his teenage pals.
That's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying,
I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
Baseball is cigar smoke, hot roasted peanuts, the sporting news, ladies day, down in front, take me out to the ball game, the seventh inning stretch and the star spangled banner.
Baseball is a man named Campanella telling the nation's business leaders, you have to be a man to be a big leaguer.
But you have to have a lot of little boy in you, too.
This is a game for America, this baseball, a game for boys and for men.