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Friday Slide Show: Spring Training
15 March 2024
We had some errands to run in the village so we hiked down Portola one sunny afternoon. On the way, we noticed something in the weeds along the sidewalk. We took a closer look and discovered it was a baseball card.
With business to attend to, we didn't bend over to pick it up. We just smiled and continued on our way.
Then we came across a second card. And a third. After a few more cards, we began to think we might be skipping by something significant.
Like a form of spring training. A version of it arranged especially for us.
So we retraced our steps photographing the cards we'd seen just as we found them.
As a kid we didn't exactly collect them but we did chew bubble gum and we saved the cards that came with the gum. You never got cards of the stars like Willie Mays but you might catch a favorite like Willie Kirkland or Jose Pagan.
The front of each card featured a photo of the player in uniform and often taking an action pose in bright sunshine. The back of the card presented the player's career stats ready for memorization. There's a lot less reported on the back of the card these days, we could tell without bending down for a closer look.
We shot them as we found them, tangled in the weeds.
Even though it's the heady days of spring training with major league baseball being played every day in Arizona and Florida with every team still tied for first place, there is something a little sobering about these weathered images of the players blown to the side of the road.
It's a long season. But all too soon it will be time for the fall classic with only two teams left to play the most important games of the year. By then it really will be the end of the road for some of these players.
But as we put our iPhone back in our pocket, we could swear we heard an ancient refrain echo down the street.
"Play ball!"
