A gift in the mail

My baseball season tickets arrived in the mail yesterday.

It is my one splurge; it is my passion. I love the game. I love sitting in Section C at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, in the springtime sun of a Sunday afternoon, watching the shadows stretch across the field.

I love keeping score. I love watching the girls retrieve the bats. I love the symmetry of it -- three strikes, three outs, three times three innings.

I have told you how much I need an escape to stay sane. Our national game is just that.

And it's funny. As my enthusiasm has waned for the major leagues, I have come to adore the minor leagues and college baseball. I cover high school baseball, too. I told somebody once that the only thing I want named after me when I am gone is the press box at the Halls High baseball field.

If I could wave a magic wand and do whatever I wanted, I would steal Roger Angell's life -- at least part of it. William Shawn sent him to spring training one season in the early 1960s and said, "Write about what you see." Thus Angell has done in the New Yorker, on and off, for the last 40-some years.

I often think that the modern day sportswriter, feeling the pressure of working a daily beat, misses the story. They have to cover the game unfolding on the field. How many times Chipper Jones hits a home run. How many strikeouts Tim Hudson racked up in his last outing. And so forth.

I once watched Herman the usher dance and yell in the section in which I was sitting, somewhere along the third base line, at Turner Field. I had the story written before I returned to the keyboard. The Braves lost. And yet Herman smiled.

One opening day, I watched the sky turn from peaceful azure to brilliant pink. Seventy-three degrees. "Sweet Caroline" on the loudspeaker and an empty seat next to mine. I thought of a girl, big brown eyes and dark hair, and wished she were sitting to my left. These are the moments I remember.

John Updike wrote the best piece ever composed on baseball, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." Guess how? The subject of an interview stood him up. So, he went to Fenway Park on an impulse, bought a ticket, sat in the stands, and wrote about Ted Williams' last at-bat. It was quite good.

Angell is a master, too. Oh, and W.P. Kinsella, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (I'm still thinking about submitting a piece -- just to see if I can get accepted), wrote a magical little novel, "Shoeless Joe," that became a magical little film, "Field of Dreams."

Yes, I am sitting here in my living room, watching snow melt from the patio table, dreaming of spring. I can smell the peanuts and Cracker Jack, I can see the shadows stretch across the field, I can see that fellow in Section C, Row 4, Seat 3, losing himself in the national game.

Six more weeks of winter? Maybe. For me, though, it will arrive on Feb. 20.

Bury my heart at Lonesome Dove

From time to time you're often asked in a survey or some such thing that irritating question, "What is your favorite book?"

Like songs and movies, I can't ever name just one. But my stock answer, if I'm forced to name just one, is usually Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove."

Oh, yes, I could go for a more literary choice ("The Sun Also Rises"), or a sentimental favorite ("Shoeless Joe"), but there's something special about McMurtry's 1985 Pulitzer-winning tale about the epic cattle drive to Montana.

At its heart, "Lonesome Dove" is the story of the great friendship between Texas Rangers Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. It's peppered with all the usual suspects -- violence, action, romance, tragedy.

McMurtry never quite equaled what he did in its pages, although "The Last Picture Show" comes mighty close. It's special; these characters stay in your thoughts long after you turn the final page.

Which is why I remained weary of the book's various sequels and prequels for so many years. I didn't want to return to the characters' lives, fearful that the warm feeling would dim if McMurtry went in a direction I didn't want to follow.

He did exactly that in "Streets of Laredo," but I ended up enjoying the ride anyway. "Dead Man's Walk" and "Comanche Moon" were more successful, although none captured the magic of that first (and best) book.

And now CBS has brought "Comanche Moon" to television as a three-part mini-series. I'll save my review of it until after tonight's final broadcast.

But I must say that it got me thinkin' about Gus and Call, Clara and Maggie, Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker, all those beloved characters we first met 20 years ago. Funny, isn't it, how such figments of an author's imagination can hang around all this time, as real as the guy that lives down the street.

No, that's not quite true. In some ways, the one's that really count, Gus and Call and company are old friends.

Through their words and actions I learned something about life and human behavior. And maybe, truth be told, a little about myself too.