SWEET

“Take me out to the ballgame,”
Caroline urged her beau,
and off they go;
Season tix.
All through the first six,
Caroline screams for the hometown crew.
They're down by two.
But in inning seven,
they score eleven!
Caroline stands by,
stretches arms to the sky,
and sings her rallying cry,
“So good, so good, so good!”

Musings

Is it time to start thinking about baseball already? Silly question. This is Boston. We never stop.

The hot stove season has been chugging along for months, a game of contract negotiations and trades, where entire upcoming seasons can be won by obtaining a star prospect's signature, or lost by signing the wrong free agent.

Pitchers and catchers report on February 12th for a spring training that starts, for my hometown team, with an exhibition against the Northeastern Huskies on February 21st, extends through the Grapefruit League season of February 22nd through March 23rd, and ends with two games in Monterrey, Mexico, against the Monterrey Sultanes on March 24th and 25th.

The Red Sox season opener is scheduled to take place, assuming a successful border recrossing, on March 27th with the first of four games against the Texas Rangers, followed by three in Baltimore and the home opener hosting St. Louis on April 4th.

Play ball!

Today in America is also a National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, who died last month at age 100. Carter was an Atlanta Braves fan, but since the Braves began their franchise history in Boston, and played here from 1871 through 1952, that's how Carter would have first known them.

I like to think of the Braves as a Boston's National League team that's taking an extended road trip to Georgia by way of Milwaukee, a reframing that makes Jimmy a genuine Boston sports fan.

Carter's post-presidency push to purge the parasitic diseases onchocerciasis (Guinea worm) and dracunculiasis (river blindness) was enabled by his philanthropic partner, John Moores, one-time owner of the San Diego Padres.

Moores was sitting next to Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, at a Braves and Padres game in Atlanta on April 19, 1996, when Jimmy Carter became the first ex-president ever to catch a foul ball hit into the stands.

As Moores recounts it, the ball came screaming off the bat of Padres third-baseman Ken Caminiti, heading directly at Rosalyn until Jimmy reached out and barehanded the ball with a right hand that Moores described as "nasty and infected" with a large splinter from Jimmy's woodworking.

That's love.

More Tomorrow.