Open­ing Day! It’s finally upon us. My dash­board wid­get tells me that the games begin in a half-hour. Today, base­ball offi­cially starts for me — the made for TV exhibition-games-that-count from Japan and the cel­e­bra­tion of cor­po­rate wealth from last night don’t count as far as my soul goes.

And my soul needs base­ball. After 15 impor­tant, for­ma­tive years in San Fran­cisco, I’m feel­ing very much the Cal­i­for­nia boy trans­planted to New York City, and it’s been hard in a few ways. While the win­ter was mild, it began with a cold fall and a chill has lin­gered into spring. Today it might be 50 degrees for the sec­ond time this spring, but wet. So, I’m need­ing spring with a jones more pow­er­ful than the bas­ket­ball one I used to get in my ‘play­ing’ days.

I watched a bit of last nights Braves-Nats game, but it seemed more a cel­e­bra­tion of the cor­po­rate takeover of Amer­i­can life, with the review of the fan­ci­est ameni­ties at the new sta­dium, the Dauphin, nose bright and shiny red from his ongo­ing bour­bon binge throw­ing out the first pitch, and being notice­ably booed. I’m glad I missed his appear­ance in the booth, talk­ing his usual dri­vel while the coun­try burns. I love sports and I wel­come their dis­trac­tion from the day-to-day grind, but I can’t be expected to numb myself with sen­ti­men­tal comity when some­one who has dam­aged as many lives as Bush has is paraded through my liv­ing room.

But I love sports — the NBA, espe­cially now that they’re play­ing good bas­ket­ball again; the NFL and my beloved Jints — but base­ball is still the best. It’s the best because it’s the most beau­ti­ful, because it inspires the best writ­ing, and the best songs and the best art. There’s a lot of metaphors for the game, some over­done, some pow­er­ful, and one that is true for me is that it is like the best Amer­i­can music. The game has a set of rules, it begins with a pitch into the unknown, unfolds with a bal­ance of coop­er­a­tion, impro­vi­sa­tion, chance and sur­prise, and ends when everyone’s fin­ished, not when a clock says so. That’s jazz, baby.

Play ball!