October Baseball

    It is October now, and there is nothing like October Baseball.  In these last few days of the regular season, teams are making the final push to determine if they will make it to the post-season, and if they do, whether they will get a coveted game in the Division Series or have to battle it out in the new one-game play in for the wild-card.  It is looking like my beloved Cardinals may just squeak in, and if last year is any indication, they will take advantage of any opportunity they are given.

    There is a certain significance attached to late September and early October baseball that is altogether absent from those games played in the dog-days of summer when the stands are empty except for the most ardent of fans.  But the truth is, statistically, that mid-July game played in front of almost no one counts just as much as much toward a winning record as that 162^nd game played in primetime on the 2^nd or 3^rd night in October.  It just doesn’t seem like it at the time.  Our mid-season determines our post-season. Players would probably tell you that the pre-season is more important still.

    It is harvest now on farms across the south, and there is urgency in the air.  Maybe it is the cooling air that quickens my step, or maybe the coming winter and the knowledge of all I know must be completed before.  This is our post-season, and I’m starting to look toward next year’s season thinking those early games are just as important as those later ones.

    It has been a good year for baseball.  I got to take my 2-year old son to a couple of games at the local minor-league park, and we sat and ate nachos and watched a full 9 innings.  We got a foul ball at both games, and on the way home he learned “Take me out to the Ballgame.”   It is looking like my Cardinals are at least going to see some post-season action, despite the fact that they lost Pujols.

     But it has been a tough year for farming: droughts, disease, hurricanes, and no small amount of uncertainty about policy and markets.  I’m looking forward to the post-season in baseball, but I’m looking forward to the pre-season in farming, and to playing every game like it counts.