Summer's game makes lot of sense

Region - Summer and baseball are meant to be together.

July and August, New England, and baseball were made for each other. The weather is usually right for the games, the fields are green, and the game doesn't get much better than summer ball.

Quickly, as if one had any doubts, it becomes easy to understand how this game could be America's pastime, certainly our summer game.

Juxtapose summer baseball in New England to what is played back in March and April as colleges and high schools get things started. Fields, if not snow covered, are gray drab, as still hibernating grass is hardly green. Temperatures are more usual for football. A snap of the bat is likely to send a shiver up the arm of the batter. Batted balls rocket off the infield, still hard from a long winter, like smashed up the middle on the hardpack of Route 495. Teams race the available sunlight as daylight is still precious. Only the most loyal family members brave the conditions, providing the few spectators of those earlyseason games. But there is hope in those early games, hope of what comes in the months that follow. Those early games are not how I believe Abner Doubleday envisioned that this game would be played.

Flash to the present. Summer in New England. Maybe not a better place to being playing this game.

Summer baseball is a game that is about the senses: senses that are heightened, put on high alert. There is something alluring, awakening about the combo of baseball and summer, one that brings out the best of the senses.

Smell. Some will say it starts before even hitting the field. It could be the Sausage King cart perched behind Fenway's Green Monster, or the whiff s of the dank corridors of the innards of the old ball park. It continues on the ball field and the equipment. These are some of the characters of the summer game.

Close my eyes and I can still smell the leather of my first baseball glove. I challenge you to pull out the old baseball glove, no matter how many years since you last used it, close your eyes, put it up to your nose, and take a whiff. Be prepared for flashbacks back to your childhood.

Watch a summer baseball game. Players are often putting their gloves up to their faces. It's not just to check the autograph burned into the glove's pocket, or hide some words between teammates from lip readers. Ball players take comfort in that smell. Long live the genuine cowhide baseball gloves; no synthetic hides need apply here.

The senses are filled with visuals that stay with us a lifetime. Well manicured dirt infields, with crisp, white, perfect foul lines down the first and third base lines giving way to vibrant well cut grass help paint the visuals. It's something not easily forgotten, something we take comfort in returning to each summer.

There is a feel about the game. Players like to scoop up some dirt, run it between the fingers, feel the game. There is a connection between athlete and playing field unlike most other sports. There is the feel between athlete equipment. The pop of the well thrown ball pounding the pocket of a glove, or the feel of perfect contact of a hardball striking the sweet spot of the bat. The pursuit of those feels brings players back again each summer.

Author W.P. Kinsella had it right in "Field Of Dreams." Build it and they will come. There is something special about a baseball field, the game, and summer weather that floods our senses and keeps us coming back each year.

Racing in

Shrewsbury

Lace up your racing shoes and head down to Shrewsbury's Floral Street School for some summer road racing Saturday, July 21, for the Third Annual 5K Road Race to benefit Special Olympics. The wheel-measured, third annual 3.1-mile road race kicks off at 8:30 a.m. This is a well run event and it's for a great cause. Give it a run.