The Months Without Baseball

Can it be only 4 days since the Cardinals won it all? Can it be that I'm still shaking my head, not understanding how it can be true? Can it be that one wicked Wainwright slider ended seven months of hopes and dreams, just like that? Can it be that October is already past, leaving us to stare into a leafless, lifeless November and beyond - nothing but months of snow on the basepaths, frost in the dugout, and ice on the diamond?

Can it be that there are still three-and-a-half months until spring training? Can it be that I miss baseball already?

At the end of this season, of all seasons, can something still be missing? This season of losing streaks, of injuries, of strke threes, of swept-by-the-Cubbies? This season of Weaver, of Marquis, of Wilson, of Miles and Miles and Miles?

This season of Spiezio, of Albert the Great, of Soooooup, of Carp (just Carp), of Eck the Pest, of did-you-really-just-do-that-P-dub?, of Yadi, Yadi, Yadi?

Can something still be missing, even after this?

Yes. For this was the season in which the child in us defeated the adult in us. This was the season in which the "we can do it" beat the "we know better." This was the season in which hope beat cynicism, the season in which love beat knowledge.

This was the season to savor. This was the season of the "why not," the season of the "maybe more."

But there is no more. Not for a while. Nothing to savor now but hot stove discussions and speculations gone mad. Suppan? Weaver? Spiezio? Belliard?

All of it nothing but fantasy gone amok. All of it nothing but the displacement of childhood dreams, the substitution of X-L-S for 6-4-3. All of it just numbers, numbers, numbers.

All of it mattering not at all in comparison to the specific physics of a ball that climbs and climbs and climbs and falls and falls and falls and finally fades into the cradle of a child's hands in a late summer twilight, to the "hurray" of the crowd.

Not mattering at all, even a little bit, until the whiff of early spring grass brings the next hit-and-run, the next suicide squeeze, the next double up the gap, the next "Oh, Tony, what-are-ya-thinkin?"

Until the next swing-and-a-miss.

For in the end, that's what we live for. The next swing-and-a-miss. Not the last one, no matter how sweet the slider, or how significant the stakes, or how ungainly the Inge.

It's the next one that keeps us waiting, and watching, and dreaming of summer days to come, of autumns full of baseballs loaded with dirt and grit and spit and gumption.

The next one. It's a long way away, a winter-spring-summer-fall. A long, long way away.

So fly into the winter, Redbirds.

We'll see you in the spring.