With baseball writers buzzing this week about comedian Billy Crystal’s short stint with the New York Yankees, Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt picked a good time for a column on his own stab at spring training glory:
As spring training moves toward Opening Day, rekindling in baseball fans everywhere the flickering and foolish hope that this could be the year for their team, I share with you my own story of child-like dreams rubbing up against reality. It’s a saga I like to think of as My (Almost) Magical Inning.
In this case it was the Baltimore Orioles (who went on to win the World Series that fall). And while it’s true that it was a spring training exhibition game, not a “real” game, and
it took place in a rundown ballpark in Miami, not Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, and it was to be in a “B” squad game, not an “A” squad game, and it was only for a fraction of the game, not the whole game, still — to play on the field with your heroes, in uniform, who wouldn’t jump at this chance of a lifetime?
So when a well-placed friend arranged for this to happen (long before Baseball Fantasy Camps became a booming business for affluent, grown-up kids), I flew down to Miami from Baltimore, excited and nervous, and clutching my weather-beaten fielders glove. …
