Baseball is back: Opening the book on a new season
- wwsmith6410
- Apr 10
- 5 min read
(First appeared in The Baldwin Times for Gulf Coast Media, April 3, 2026.)
By Wayne Smith
Gulf Shores Media Contributor
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
— Baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby
My love of baseball goes back a few decades.
I can point to the exact time — getting a copy of Street and Smith’s 1972 Baseball Guide with Roberto Clemente on the cover.
I was 7 years old, in the hospital with asthma. Mom and Dad brought me the magazine. I read it cover to cover.
And a love affair with the sport was born.
Years later, I still have that magazine.
The pages are worn now, but the memories aren’t.
That’s the thing about baseball. In a world that changes as fast as ours does, it somehow stays the same.
Watching Opening Day last week felt like a national holiday — rookies making their mark, new names stepping into the spotlight, and the Braves opening the season with a win behind Chris Sale’s pitching — and then a walk-off grand slam on Saturday.
For me, it’s always been a numbers game — but not in the way you might think.
27 — the number of outs each team gets. A structure you can count on. And the number of World Series championships won by the New York Yankees—the gold standard, even for a Braves fan like me. And the 1927 Yankees, the best team ever.
162 — a full season. Not a sprint, but a journey. Ups and downs, streaks and slumps — kind of like everything else.
60 feet, 6 inches — the distance from mound to home plate. Close enough for a duel. Far enough to make it a challenge.
3 and 2 — a full count. Nothing left to give. One pitch decides everything.
24 — Willie Mays. Alabama’s “Say Hey Kid.” Effortless greatness.
7 — Mickey Mantle. Power, presence, and a number that still carries weight.
56 — Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak. One of those numbers that feels untouchable.
406 — Ted Williams. The last man to hit .400. A number from another era.
715 — Mobile’s Hank Aaron passing Babe Ruth. More than a record — history, pressure, grace.
66 — the Braves’ first season in Atlanta. The beginning of something that would mean a lot to a lot of us.
10 — Chipper Jones. Steady. Reliable. There when you needed him.
3 — Babe Ruth. Where so much of the game’s mythology begins.
They’re just numbers.
But they’re also something more.
They’re snapshots.
Moments.
Memories tied to where you were, who you were with, and how life felt at the time.
The Braves became my team early on—listening to games on the radio before eventually getting TBS and every game televised. I still prefer listening to games on the radio. We endured some tough Braves teams in the ’70s and ’80s. But then came the ’90s. 1995. And 2021.
My parents took me to my first Braves game in the late ’70s. Dorinda went to many games with me—including one August game when she was about seven months pregnant. So have our two children.
I think about that when I look at a photo of Dorinda at a Braves game from 2023 — caught mid-celebration after an Atlanta win in the 10th inning, smiling like the moment might last forever.
She loved those moments, even though it took me a few years to win her over when it came to baseball. She loved the fans rising to cheer. Watching the crowd. The simple joy of a game that didn’t ask for anything except that you be there. No time limit.
In 2018, when Chipper Jones was inducted into the Hall of Fame, I made the trip to Cooperstown with my son Alex.
We stopped along the way at Yankee Stadium — a must for true baseball fans.Back home, Dorinda was watching the induction on TV. At one point, the camera panned the crowd and landed on me for just a few seconds.
She saw it. And she recorded it — laughing in amazement as she watched it happen. I went back to that video again this week.
That’s the thing about baseball. It doesn’t stay in one place. It doesn’t end with the final out.
It travels. Through time. Through memory. Through the people you share it with.
These days, some of my favorite baseball moments don’t happen in a stadium. They happen on the beach in Gulf Shores — radio on, waves rolling in, a game playing through my earbuds.
It’s a different kind of ballpark. But the sound is the same.
And now, there’s a new set of moments being made.
Last July, on my birthday, I sat in the stands with my grandson Rhys at his first Braves game — a gift from my daughter. Watching him take it all in, smiling the way kids do when everything is new, I was reminded again why the game matters.
Living here, I’m just a short drive from the other side of the game — Pensacola and the Blue Wahoos to the east, the Montgomery Biscuits a little further north. You’ve got to love those names. Minor league parks, summer nights, the game up close again.
Like spring, every year the numbers reset. The standings go back to zero.
And for a while, anything feels possible again. Every team has a chance. Maybe that’s why the game endures.
Because no matter how much changes around us, some things don’t.
Opening Day means something else, too. It means seven straight months of the best game on Earth — being played somewhere, every single day.
There are more changes in baseball now — replay reviews, challenged calls, pitchers working on a clock. And there’s a modern-day Babe Ruth in Shohei Ohtani.
But the numbers are still there.
The rhythm is still there.
And if you’re lucky —
the game keeps traveling with you, long after the last out.
Wayne Smith has worked as a writer and editor at newspapers across Alabama, Florida and South Carolina. His weekly column focuses on navigating Gulf Shores alone after losing his wife to cancer, and the places he discovers and the people he meets. Read his previous columns at www.GulfCoastMedia.com. Contact him at wwsmith6410@gmail.com.
Comments