The whole key, on Opening Day, was to keep the baseball out of the mud.
They had extra baseballs at Dodger Stadium, and at Busch Stadium and Riverfront Stadium and Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park and other places. But a mile down Crocker Road, in Randolph Center, Vermont, we had only one baseball. And every Opening Day, the dirt of Crocker Road was a soggy, muddy quagmire from the melting snow, such a mess that during this time of year, the school bus driver wouldn't even bother attempting to make it to our place; we walked a mile and a half to the corner.
But I'd skip school on Opening Day, with my mother's wordless permission, and dig my glove out of the pile of baseball cards under my bed and walk up to Jacques's sugarhouse, where clouds from boiling sap rose out of the roof, to play catch and listen to Ned Martin and Jim Woods describe the Red Sox's first game of the season.
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Buster Olney
