by Barry Stagg
March 1999
SPRING TRAINING IN THE SNOW
While March may be a cold, miserable, wet month in Newfoundland, nevertheless it is the month when baseball's spring training begins in the considerably more hospitable climes of Florida and Arizona. There is nothing quite like the seasonally bizarre sensation of listening to a radio broadcast of a Florida spring training game while sitting at the controls of a freezing and unheated Volkswagen Beetle in the middle of a Newfoundland snow squall. I can distinctly remember doing just that in the late seventies when my friend and I, both Volkswagen aficionados, were making a frosty trek from Stephenville to that well known baseball neighbourhood, Berry Head. The journey was to honour some sort of obligation the Volkswagen driver had to an adult education class, as I recall, but I had the foresight to tune in the Yankee's spring training game while this more mundane task was being completed. My friend, an incorrigible St. John's soccer fan, saw little entertainment value in both the baseball broadcast and the ridiculous environment in which it was being received. Of course, in my estimation, that said more for the lack of a gas heater in this particular Volkswagen than it did for the quality of the sports fan listening to the radio.
There will be sunny days on Berry Head again this summer and the weather on the Berry Head baseball field will catch up, to some extent, with the green grass and balmy breezes of Yankee Stadium. In the middle of March neither Berry Head nor Yankee Stadium are fit places for baseball and as a result baseball must nestle in the warm beating hearts of its northern fans in both locales. It occurs to me that this summer will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of the series where the now fabled St. John's Capitals took their championship baseball team out to the little Newfoundland village of Port au Port and duelled with the Port au Port Vikings in what was to have been the equivalent of the New York Yankees trampling over the Italian All Stars. The Capitals won the series but they were introduced to the talents of legendary Lourdes left-hander Phonse Jesso. Jesso defeated the Capitals in the second game of that series 3-1 and, but for a few unfortunate umpiring calls, the next afternoon, Sunday, his right-handed counterpart, Mike O'Neil, would have done the same to the mighty Caps. As it turned out the Capitals squeaked out a 4-3 win and then went on to swamp the Vikings in long predicted fashion on Monday.
That 1964 series was probably the apex of baseball in Port au Port. Many of the people who played on these baseball teams have gone on to prominent places in both sports, business and politics in Newfoundland. It was a time when the playing of baseball had a lot to do with the honour and tradition of sport and the whole issue of character building through honourable and honest ball playing was very much an accepted civic role for young men.
Baseball in the winter exists in the heart. It is as if summer lies suspended in memory. That is as true of life in general as it is of this sport. Thirty-five years has put many of the participants in that 1964 baseball series well toward the winter of their own lives and some have even passed on through. However, no matter what passengers remain to take the remainder of the ride, spring training will begin in March and baseball will flow on the northern airwaves to Newfoundland from Florida. In time the snow will go, the grass will grow, and new players will go about the business of executing the eternal double play.
Until next month: Be proud, Be prosperous.