Opening Day 2008

It's Opening Day! Finally! Every baseball fan in America still believes his or his team can win the pennant this year. Another month and that dream will be shattered for most of us, but for now...anything is possible.

Plotnik dreamed last night that he was playing right field, and that he was left handed. (Plotnik never played right field and he is not left handed.) A batter hit a ground ball into the outfield. Plotnik charged it, and with his left hand threw the runner out at second base. He then trotted nonchalantly back to his fielding position.

The dream continued. The next batter was Steve Sax (an old Plotzer who has been retired for at least 15 years. Steve Sax hit a screaming line drive out to right field and Plotnik discovered he wasn't wearing his glasses, so he couldn't see the ball very well. He leaped out of its way as it whizzed by him.

Here's the crazy thing. Obviously, the opening of baseball season brought back to Plotnik a fear he hadn't had since tenth grade, which was before he had gotten his glasses. He didn't know then that he couldn't see very well, but he did know that when he was playing the outfield, and a ball would be hit in his direction, it was always very hard to find it and react to it. This is why Plotnik didn't want to play the outfield on his High School team, but the coach put all the marginal players into the outfield.

Trust Plottie when he says he hasn't thought about that uncomfortable feeling, as he squinted towards the infield trying to figure out which blur was the real one, for one minute of those 47 years that have passed since then. Not once. And yet -- there he was, last night, back on the myopic field of bad dreams.

That baseball season, in the tenth grade, was when Mummy Plotnik took Plottie, complaining all the while, to the eye doctor and got him fitted for his first pair of glasses. He immediately discovered a miracle: a baseball has red stitches around it.

The next day, the first time he batted in batting practice, now wearing his new glasses, he cracked the first pitch far over the center fielder's head. He couldn't believe how easy it had been to hit the ball. He had never realized before that he couldn't see, or, truer yet, that other people could see better than he could. Wow. And 47 years later he dreamed about it again -- but not the part about seeing so much better but the part about being half-blind on a baseball field as a ball is zooming in your direction.



For those baseball fans who are still reading, look at the lineup on the scoreboard: this was the Plotzer lineup in September, 2006. Not many of those guys are still on the team or in the lineup today: only Furcal, Kent, Martin and Penny. Go Plotzers!