Tomorrow is opening day, or at least it was meant to be. Instead, the start to the 2020 season has been added to the growing list of things cancelled or postponed due to Covid-19.
Let’s just say it’s not my favorite development.
On March 12th, the MLB quite responsibly made the call to cancel the remainder of spring training and postpone the start to the season at least two weeks, a timetable which was soon after extended indefinitely. Even with two full weeks to prepare myself, I’m still not ready. For the first time since the work stoppage in 1972, April will begin without baseball. Yet, unlike 1972, this year April will almost certainly come and go with ballparks across the country still empty.
Obviously, this is an infinitesimally small thing relative to the pain being suffered by so many. Perspective and empathy should be central in the midst of this global crisis. Still, the small things that matter to us don’t cease to matter, even if those things rightfully fail to measure on the richter scale of the world as a whole.
For me, baseball is the thing I would turn to in times like these as a balm for my troubled mind in the midst of anxiety and depression. From April to October, I always have baseball. The dailyness of baseball is one of the things I love most about it. It’s ever-present for two thirds of the year; whether front and center, or in the background, or merely available for me to follow rumors and news, then check box scores and recaps at the end of each day. Every single day, baseball is there. The game is a significant part of the pace and rhythm of my life for seven months — with the delightful prelude that is spring training adding an eighth month onto the front-end.
All that to say that the turn of the calendar from March into April without the inauguration of a new season matters to me.
And so, I was left to decide what I’d do to mitigate the impact of its absence as best I could. I came up with a twofold plan:
First, I decided to buy MLB: The Show 20 for PS4 and play entirely too much of it during my self-isolation. Easy.
It’s the second part of my plan that’s a bit more ambitious. Pointless, but ambitious just the same. I’ve decided to resurrect ‘Another Day, Another Movie**,’ by watching 30 baseball movies in 30 days. As always, I’ll be writing about each one here as I go. My rationale is that this combines my need for baseball content with my attempt at using this time stuck indoors to create a writing habit for the first time in years.
So, if you’re like me and carry a heavy heart at the prospect of a spring without baseball, join me in the hopes that these movies, while they certainly can’t replace a real season, might at least lessen the pain.
Starting tomorrow, and for the next 30 days, I’ll watch 30 preselected baseball movies. I’ll share thoughts, reactions, and/or memories for each entry. With each post, I’ll reveal the next day’s film, and invite you to watch alongside me — albeit from the safety of separate living rooms. To that end, the movie on the docket for opening day is The Sandlot.
I’ll also be throwing up some bonus content along the way, because we need all of the baseball we can get.
I love you baseball, please hurry home.
**If you’re unfamiliar, ‘Another Day, Another Movie’ is a series I’ve done over the years on this blog. I pick a genre or sub-genre of films I want to be more familiar with, then take a deep-dive by watching one related movie for every day over a set period of time. I do research to find films that are representative and/or significant for the genre, find outliers that have a cult following, and often watch peripheral films which heavily influenced or were influenced by the genre (e.g. watching samurai films during my 30 days of westerns.) This whole thing started with horror films, with the very first Halloween Movie Fest — an exercise that has been repeated many times. I’ve also done westerns, noir, time travel, and post-apocalypse.
