As with your shadow I with these did play." - Sonnet 98
By calendar, the first day of Spring happens on between March 19th and March 23rd ever year. And yet for me the exact day of Spring has no set appointment. Spring begins on a Saturday afternoon when it's 70 degrees out and sunny. It's warm but not hot and it's the first day you open the windows and let the occasional breeze sift through the house. The best thing on tv is baseball. But not just baseball, pre-season baseball. If one were to take everything boring about the game of baseball and then subtract from that all the excitement, would you would be left with would be pre-season baseball. Calling the game is Harry Kalas. His rich baritone and the humming white noise of the non-crowd suggest that it might feel good to rest your eyes for a bit... Slipping back into consciousness again after an indeterminate amount of time, it's the 6th inning... Harry Kalas: "Walked 'im..." and Dave Hollins strolls lazily to first base. Nothing to see here, eyes closed once again...
And so it was... the exact moment when Spring had begun for the year, every year. And every year, every single detail - aside from Dave Hollins - could be counted on and looked back upon in each of the specific instances from last year, to being a teenager in high school to being 8 years old watching with my dad.
When Harry Kalas passed away last year, people said his voice was the soundtrack to their Summer. These weren't just kind words, they were the literal truth. When people said, "It won't be Summer without Harry" it was just an expression, it is the exact predicament I find myself in. How do I feel that Spring is here?
"Well," I figured, "if I could find a clip on the internet of sufficient mundanity and length, I could watch it as self-therapy and link it for others." But, alas, to the best of my internet searching skills, no such clip exists. There are tons of Harry Kalas tributes, there's Harry calling Mike Schmidt's 500th homerun, there's Harry making the calling 2008 World Series call, etc. Those are not just good, they're great but they're the essence of Fall, not Spring. I need a clip of Harry making calls when nothing is on the line and nothing significant happens. I need the sound of sweet monotony, when everything is completely ordinary in every way, when Harry's voice is the aural equivalent of a hammock with a sinky middle and a glass of lemonade on the ground.
Here's hoping that sometime before next year someone uploads old Phillies game footage which is completely ordinary in every way. Until then it won't be the same. We may spend 99% of our lives avoiding the dull, avoiding the monotonous, alleviating boredom, and yet here I am wishing it back - at least in this small measure. I think it's because it offers some comforting illusions that become increasingly rare as one gets older. Hearing Harry Kalas call baseball on lazy, sunny Saturday afternoons, life isn't hard, life is easy. Things don't change, things basically stay the same. Life isn't short, life is long. Time doesn't move fast, time moves slow... if at all.
