Baseball's Season End

Baseball season is winding down.  What are die-hard baseball fans to do when the World Series is over? Bill ponders what the end of the MLB season means to especially devoted fans.

What do you do when it's over? What do you do when it's done?

Each autumn the question arises, no matter who's lost or won.

What if you've no taste for football? And your hockey and basketball jones

Doesn't kick in 'til the playoffs? What if you feel in your bones

The cold of the on-coming season, the darkness of each empty park

Where baseball is played in the summer? And what if your life lacks a spark

Because baseball is closed for the winter, the players dispersed in the fall,

Some to return in the spring time; some, I suppose, not at all.

Sure, there is on-going soccer, here and in Europe as well,

But if you think soccer is boring, you won't buy what they have to sell.

So what do you do when the echoes of all of the cheering subside?

And one great big part of the country commences the annual slide

Into wind, sleet, and ice on the highway, and lost gloves, or lost glove, at least…

I don't know 'bout winter where you live; where I live it can be a beast.

The answer? I guess we depend on the fact that we never forget

The moments we choose to sustain us, on days when it's cold and we're wet.

The buzz of the overbooked ballpark, the roar at the timely homerun,

The fielder sprawled out on that greenest of grass when he's stretched at the end of his run,

And he holds up the ball for the umpire, and all of those gathered to see,

Or the closer who brings the unhittable pitch, and the tension his pitch can set free.

The end of the long baseball season, when every last out has been made,

Continues to live in the minds of the fans even after they've watched the parade.