Hope Springs Eternal at Spring Training

        JUPITER, FLORIDA – It is March, and once again this year, I am at spring training with my beloved St. Louis Cardinals.   

        I’ve been making this annual spring sojourn to Florida for over 30 years, dating back to my days as a college undergraduate.  Then and now, college men spent spring break in Florida chasing co-eds.  But I came here to chase a dream. 

        It is a dream that began on a warm summer day in 1959 when I was just 7 years old.  My father took me to old Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis where we watched the Cardinals play the Milwaukee Braves.  It was the greatest day of my childhood.  No other day came even close. 

        Dad and I saw Henry Aaron and Warren Spahn of the defending National League Champion Braves.  Better yet, I got to see my hero, Stan the Man Musial, and my future hero, a young catcher from Memphis named Tim McCarver.   

        The game had a storybook finish.  So help me, Stan the Man hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth.  Over a half century later I still treasure the moment I saw that ball sail out of Sportsman’s Park, and Stan the Man circle the bases. 

        It was at that moment a half century ago that my dream began.  I was going to be a St. Louis Cardinal.  I even knew what position I would play.  Second base. 

        For several years during the 1960s, I actually did play for the Cardinals, but not the St. Louis Cardinals.  The Dellwood Baptist Cardinals.  And I didn’t play second base.  The coach put me in left field, not coincidently a place where little league ball players almost never hit the ball.   

        I only had three weaknesses as a ball player.  I couldn’t hit, couldn’t catch and couldn’t throw.  Other than that, I was quite a prospect.   

        Despite spending several years of my childhood at an automatic pitch batting cage in downtown Frayser, Tennessee, I could never hit a curve ball.  I also could not hit a knuckle ball, a fast ball, or a slow pitch softball.   

        They didn’t have T ball when I was a boy.  But based on my later performance as a golfer, I suspect I could not have batted .200 in the North Memphis T Ball League.   

        I did manage to get on base a fair amount of the time.  That’s because I was barely five foot tall, and so when I squatted down in the batter’s box, my strike zone was about the same size as a key hole. 

        But when I got on first base after four balls, I seldom advanced.  I did not have the blinding speed of Lou Brock or Maury Wills.  I ran like Bob Uecker. 

        By junior high, my baseball career appeared to be over.  I did not make my high school team and when I tried to get on the American Legion Team, the coach told me I was better fit for the Foreign Legion.  

        But big league dreams are like the 1962 New York Mets.  Even when you lose 120 games in a season, you come back next spring. 

        And so, for over 30 years, I have reported to the Cardinals for spring training.  And this year, I have something in common with Albert Pujols.  Neither of us have a contract.   

        Today I am sitting at beautiful Roger Dean Stadium right behind the Cardinals dugout.  Well, not exactly right behind.  Eight rows behind. 

        I wish I were in the dugout, or better yet, out by second base.  But at the age of 58, I still can’t hit a Bob Gibson fastball or a Barney Schultz knuckler.  I seriously doubt that when the Cardinals take the field at Busch Stadium next Thursday I will be with them. 

        But hope springs eternal at spring training.  On this glorious spring day, I’m still that little boy that sat in Sportsman’s Park 52 years ago.  And I’m dreaming that Tony Larussa will climb to the top step of the dugout, look back into the stands and yell, “Hey, Billy!...Suit up!”