Easter and Baseball

For most of the Christian world, Easter is a time to celebrate the religious rebirth. The images of Easter include spring flowers in bloom, the thoughts of parades, and Easter bonnets. In our house it means something much more.

Easter this year happens to fall on Opening Day Eve, the most sacred night in a baseball fan’s life. Oh sure, there will be those in Boston and New York City that will argue that today is actually Opening Day but I am a baseball purist. I refuse to recognize any game played prior to the Cincinnati Reds start time.

In many households the children will awaken and wander into the living room hoping to find they have been visited by a giant rabbit that has left a wicker basket filled with plastic grass and hidden hard boiled eggs around the house.

This is wrong on so many levels. First, the thoughts of a rabbit breaking and entering into my house make me want to question the validity of my home security system. Second, I am not sure how excited I am at the thoughts of said rabbit raiding my refrigerator and hiding hard-boiled chicken embryos around my house. I never quite understood the whole wicker connection either and don’t even get me started with the fact that this rabbit is a fan of artificial turf!

Clearly this holiday has serious issues that need to be resolved. Rather than continue these crazy traditions I have taken matters in my own hands and have developed a new set of celebrations around our house. I must preface this with the following statement, “These traditions are the sole responsibility of me and it should be noted that my wife completely disagrees with all of these items and the resultant therapy my children will need.”

Rather than the traditional Easter basket, in our house the cornucopia of candy and gifts is contained within a new baseball hat preferably a fitted New Era Authentic MLB model. Inside the hat are freshly cut grass clippings preferably from the infield of a Major League Baseball stadium but if those are not available then any BOBSod grass clippings will work. Inside the hats will be peanuts, popcorn, and a box of Cracker Jack.

Instead of hiding eggs, we hid baseballs preferably authentic MLB baseballs but any ball will do. For young children you can hide softballs but under no circumstances should these be the pink balls made popular by Wal-Mart in the early 1990’s. For an extra special treat hide an autographed baseball.

At the conclusion of the baseball hunt, the children will sing “God Bless America” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, both verses. Our holiday festivities always seem to touch the neighbors. Every year they seem to stand outside and watch pointing and whispering among themselves.