Pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training, and you need to put yourself there by reading Roger Angell’s classic, The Summer Game.
I’ve always believed that the sports pages often include some of the best writing in most newspapers. While not a newspaper journalist, Angell combines the best of that type of lively writing with the close observations one sees in fiction and poetry. Here’s Angell on 44-year-old knuckleball pitcher, Hoyt Wilhelm: “The ball sailed up, made a sudden small swerve, like a moth in a hallway, and flumped feebly into the catcher’s glove, as the fans cried ‘Ah-hah!’ in unison.”
We won’t be seeing green for quite a while, but this book leads me there.