“For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always
best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy
village inside a glass paperweight.”—U.S. poet-essayist Donald Hall (1928-2018),
Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball) (1985)
Hall, the onetime poet laureate of the U.S. who died
earlier this week, was a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox. Longtime readers
of this blog know that I am not a fan of that team.
Still, when it comes to a game that “seizes and
retains the past,” few figures are so emblematic of baseball at its best than
Bosox legend Ted Williams, pictured here. Moreover, in addition to being a
hitter virtually without a peer, before or since, Williams was an American hero
who flew 39 combat missions as a Marine fighter pilot in the Korean War.
Between that conflict and World War II, he would sacrifice nearly four seasons
at the height of his career to serve his country.
Williams and Hall are well worth celebrating and
remembering this week.
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