Easter At The Ball Park

"God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.'

He looks up at me, and I look down at him.

'This must be heaven,' he says."

-- W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe

Egg-dyed baseballs and glove 4-20-14

"Baseball? It's just a game -- as simple as a ball and a bat.

Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes.

It's a sport, business -- and sometimes even religion."

-- Ernie Harwell, "The Game for All America"

"Baseball is like church.

Many attend, few understand."

-- Leo Durocher

I asked the Easter Bunny to skip the damn basket full of jellybeans and please bring me tickets to today's baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Toronto Blue Jays.

He hit a home run.

So instead of making myself sick on candy, cooking a lame-o ham, and nodding through a long, boring sermon, I'll be worshiping at a church of a different color, noshing on ball park snacks, reaching for foul balls, and root, root, rooting for the home team.

I love watching baseball. I love listening to it. So for me, spending a day at the ball park is one of the very best ways to spend a day. (On the day my son Sam was due to be born I was at Jacob's Field enjoying 13 innings of the Indians vs. the Twins.)

Like, I totally get it in that movie City Slickers, when Billy Crystal's character "Mitch" nostalgically describes his best day:

"Seven years old and my dad takes me to Yankee Stadium, my first game. 

We're going in this long dark tunnel under the stands and I'm holding his hand, 

and we come out of the tunnel into the light. It's huge, how green the grass was, brown dirt ... 

We had a black and white TV, so this was the first game I ever saw in color.

I sat through the whole game next to my dad. He taught me how me to keep score. Mickey hit one out.

I still have the program."

Best Easter ever.

Go Tribe!