Along the Way: Spring training ignites spring fever

Spring training is back and stirs within us the baseball star we never were but never could abandon.

Souls and scorebooks dwell apart — the hero we created is still there inside us. He knows no failure, affirms no retirement.

You weren’t at the edge of nowhere back then, but rather the boundary of a sea. And the waves were your boyhood dreams, rising and swelling as they bubbled up the sandy shoreline.

Those dreams did not completely dissolve into the sand. You held on tightly. You refused to let go of the game and it became part of you.

You felt that it gave you structure and steerage.

Back then you were quick as that hummingbird hovering just now at the feeder on your patio. Your legs were springy, your arms like hickory.

And you waggled that Louisville Slugger like a magic wand.

Wrists of steel would swivel and — WHAM! — smack the ball far and high, a rifle shot away. Well, it always happened that way in your fantasy (and for real a few times, on those sublime and sudden twinklings of triumph in an actual game).

With strength of limb and speed of foot, you ran.

People would show up at that hometown ballpark to watch. Men came in from forge and field, mill and mine to watch kids play the game they once played themselves.

Folks from town came out to cheer in the sweet, warm air of springtime and occasionally at night, under a marmelade moon when bugs would buzz the clusters of electric lamps fixed on tall, wooden poles.

People drove down gravel roads and parked their trucks and cars around the rim of the outfield, behind a slatted-wood snow fence.

Those trucks and cars honked their approval every time the home team did something good.

Then one day your dream disappeared. It didn’t die, it just sort of vanished and left you there to work in a barn, or in a field where tractors plowed. Or in a rail yard, or an office where you gathered facts and stapled them together for filing.

But always in your mind and in your heart, you hit that ball a mile and ran those bases like the wind.

Shaggy-haired, freckle-faced kids went as far as their dream would take them, never believing it would end some day.

And it didn’t, really. It only seemed like it — until springtime came around and it all started again, with younger kids. Strong young hearts, you see, pass baseball on to younger hearts.

The love of the game goes on. It’s a carousel ride around a ball diamond.

Honking horns and cheering townsfolk are still there, doing their part in passing the Louisville Slugger-baton to the next baseball generation. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day. Look closely or you’ll miss it.

And this is the beauty of the game:

It divides itself into innings, but its soul and the scorer’s book really do dwell apart.

The dream just won’t die.

That’s why old bones inside old warriors still come alive in springtime, when the training camps open and trucks arrive, loaded with equipment and new hope.

Those who ever played the game take down memories from the closet and wear them to the ballpark. They sit there in a breeze that’s warm and full of the scents and sounds of baseball.

And cheer the greatest game there is.

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a Friday commentary for the Green Valley News.