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| Twilight at Roger Dean Stadium, Jupiter, FL |
This year, as in years past, I greet the baseball season as a kind of pagan renewal—a way to cleanse my spirit of the nightmares and chaos of modern life. It offers a return to the beauty and structure of the game I once played and still follow, albeit casually, no longer as an obsessed fan. I remain loyal to my NY Yankees, as I have been since achieving baseball consciousness, and, since retiring to Florida, I’ve enjoyed the serendipity of landing in an area with not one but two minor league teams sharing a nearby stadium which also serves as the spring training home of the Miami Marlins and the St. Louis Cardinals. But it is the Single-A affiliates that draw me: the Jupiter Hammerheads (Marlins) and the Palm Beach Cardinals.
Sometimes they play one another; more often, one is on the road while the other hosts a rotating cast of Single-A clubs. I don’t especially favor one team over the other. I go to experience the game. And frankly, given the choice between the nosebleed seats of a major league park at Broadway prices and a minor league game at a fraction of the cost—with seats that make you feel part of it—I’ll take the latter every time. Such is the experience of being a “Silver Slugger,” attending some twenty-plus Wednesday night games at Roger Dean Stadium: $50 for the season, including a hot dog, a Coke, and even a free T-shirt when you pick up your tickets.
Purists might say that at such prices you get what you pay for—bush league play. I beg to differ. Everything about the minor league experience feels major league: the field is immaculate, professionally maintained, and the quality of play is high. Yes, there are occasional errors, but I’ve seen plenty of those at the major league level as well.
Less than ten percent of the players I’ve watched will make it to the majors, and fewer still will achieve anything like stardom. That hardly matters to me. I go to see the game, and as long as minor league baseball treats it as something close to a sacred ritual, I’ll be there.
This year, that ritual feels especially necessary. I made a similar point last season, writing about the early months of Trump 2.0 and what felt, even then, like a sledgehammer taken to the Constitution. This piece is, in a sense, a continuation, or perhaps a fast-forward, of that earlier entry, Watching the Game, Remembering the Dream.
Now the sense of political chaos seems to have widened, reaching beyond our borders and unsettling alliances we have long taken for granted since World War II, with our military at times appearing less a stabilizing force than something more transactional.
“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” Perhaps the answer lies not in nostalgia but under the lights of some 120 minor league teams, playing their weekday games and weekend doubleheaders, offering a small but steady vision of normalcy. The more the game changes—the pitch clock, electronic calls, slightly larger bases—the more it remains itself. The rules endure. There is still order within the chaos, and even a measure of hope within the surrounding sense of drift. And where else can DEI and meritocracy coexist so seamlessly—a place where those with talent and discipline can succeed, no matter where they come from? This, at least, feels like the real American credo.
This season, I’ve managed seats right behind home plate, close enough to feel part of the game itself. From there, the essentials come into focus: pitcher, catcher, batter—and even the umpire.
Last Wednesday night’s game had its share of highlights—a triple, home runs, several double plays—and ended with the Jupiter Hammerheads defeating the Daytona Tortugas (affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds) 7–4. But it’s not any single game that matters. It’s the structure, the ritual, and last Wednesday night the chance to watch a young left-hander from the Dominican Republic, Keyner Benitez (just 19 years old) throw mid-ninety mph fastballs while working his slider and changeup, giving up only two hits over 4.1 innings (one unearned run). At 6'1" and about 170 pounds, he has time to fill out, to build strength. Who knows what he might become.
When I wrote last year’s piece, another lefty was on the mound—a major leaguer on a rehab assignment, Ranger Suárez, a Venezuelan pitcher then with the Phillies. Ironically, on the very night I was watching Benitez, Suárez was pitching against my Yankees at Fenway Park (traded to the Red Sox last winter). He lost. From a baseball point of view, it was a very good week.
