Baseball isn’t back — but I am

This may be the season that wasn’t.

I’m writing this post as I conclude Week 6 of working from home during the coronavirus outbreak. Major league baseball has been postponed while most Americans and millions of others around the world are experiencing the strange sensations (or lack thereof) of social distancing.

A decade ago when I started this blog, I approached it as a creative outlet, something to keep the writing juices flowing as my professional responsibilities tilted more heavily toward the administrative.

During these long weeks of isolation from work colleagues and 24/7 togetherness with my wife, I’ve turned to baseball as a release, a rejuvenator, a salve, a stoker of memories, my own personal pastime, if no longer that of the nation.

I heard portions of one or two Philadelphia Phillies’ spring training games on the car radio before the sports leagues began shutting down. In the aftermath, I turned to the Internet Archive’s incredible trove of classic baseball radio broadcasts to get my fix. Then I brought the Strat-o-Matic boxes up from the basement and rolled through a dozen or so games.

Eventually my thoughts turned again to this blog, and I decided to resurrect it — for my own sanity. But I also hope that some of the stories I tell might help a few other baseball fans out there pining for the game we love.

Keeping to my original theme of interpreting baseball through the caps I’ve collected over the years, I’ve included a recent selfie in my 1930s vintage Philadelphia Athletics cap, mainly to prove I can still figure out how to post images in WordPress.

I also need to do some maintenance on the site, adjusting the URLs pointing to prior posts. I’ll work on that gradually while cranking up fresh material. If you’ve read this far, you have my enduring gratitude.

I hope you’ll come back, as we all hope baseball does.