On the Cusp of Pitchers and Catchers

 Driving to Valparaiso yesterday was like leaving the rear for the front lines—evidence of the enemy was everywhere, snow piled high and packed hard.  Either the good people of Indiana have run out of salt, or they’ve lost the battle to clear their roads of slick spots.

Clare had just time enough this Presidents’ Day for lunch, after which there was practice and ever-so-many jobs for the new graduate assistant; arranging the team menu for out-of –state travel is hard enough, more so when you factor in Friday is Lent and Birmingham Alabama might not be up on meatless options.  But Miss Manners got the job done.

If Clare has a few seconds between practice and class to think about baseball, the MLB app will give her all the updates she could want.  Daddy, though, is what they call a digital immigrant, someone rooted in hardcopy, not screens.  For him (me), late February meant runs to Charles Drugstore, to scan the magazine rack.  Many of the baseball publications I bought combined girlie-magazine graphics with New York Post prose.  CEPEDA: Fiery Leader of Cards.  CLEMENTE: His Inner Struggles.  Charles Atlas and his minions took up lots of ad space inside.  Steroids had nothing on them.

Baseball Digest was classier.  It offered stories like “Bill Melton: The New Harmon Killebrew?” [alas, no, he fell off a roof and screwed up his back] and “[Angel] Mangual of the A’s: An Angel with a Quick Bat/His development allowed Oakland to trade away Rick Monday” [a mistake, that].  I particularly enjoyed the annual rookie report, about how Don Lung in the Cubs’ system “has potential to be another Santo” and the Phillies’ Lowell Palmer “knows how to pitch.”  Really, scouting is a hit-or-miss proposition.

They more or less stopped printing baseball magazines before I stopped buying them.  Big, fat scouting reports with spray charts and hot-and-cold breakdowns of a hitter’s strike zone; Street and Smith’s annual predictions; and the Baseball Register.  And, whenever updates came out, I bought the Bible, aka the Baseball Encyclopedia.  Needless to say, the above always kept me from poking fun at my wife for buying issues of Vogue.

The hardcopy tradition carries on, precariously, with Who’s Who in Baseball.  I’ll have to see if Barnes and Noble has it in yet.