These are some wonderful memories that rank right up there with wife and family. But as good as they are, and as often as I whimsically recall them, they are a minor part of my baseball past.

Being part of Spring Training, though I was just an insignificant fan, envelops and embraces me like nothing else I’ve experienced outside of marriage.

Spring Training.

It’s like Heaven, only better.

But just as you can’t go home again, you can’t go back to Spring Training.

At least, not any more.

It was a joyous time. Spring training touched my heart as I thought it would, and allowed me to understand baseball from a uniquely different perspective. I was able to observe first hand not the joy on the face of the fans, but on the players themselves.

They were the kids; they were the ones living vicariously through their heroes as they did when they were little.

The smiles never left their faces.

Spring training was everything I hoped it would be. Fans and players were friends. More than once I saw a player having a catch with a young fan in the stands. Memories that would last a lifetime were created a hundred times a day in a dozen cities throughout the state.

I don't want to go back, though. My spring training doesn't exist any more. Today's spring training is carefully choreographed and sold to the highest bidder. Tickets are priced not for the average fan but for the groupies that follow them south each February.

My spring training was innocent and available to the public for free. The stands were full with fans both too young, and too old to drive.

No longer is the game available to the average pensioner or middle class fan. My game day experience cost me about $4.00; $6.00 if you include the dog and the Coke.

They were the cheapest memories I ever purchased. And they were the best.

Just like that elderly man from New York, I am much closer to the end of my life than the beginning. Though still chronologically coherent, the years of raising two severely handicapped children have taken their toll.

As you get older, you get closer to God, perhaps because you are wiser, perhaps because you are scared.

With each passing health scare, I find myself inching closer to my religious roots. The Bible is read more often and prayers are again meaningful.

I am, as it were, "covering all my bases." Just in case.

Hmm. A baseball term used to describe preparations for the end of my days.

How delicious.

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The above image of the baseball park is West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium taken during the Spring of 1986. The Twins jersey and Orlando Twins cap are the ones I wrote about in the story.

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