The Ghosts of Spring

Spring is the windiest time of year in New Mexico. Each spring, when green catkins bloom on the cottonwood at yard’s edge, and flat, triangular-shaped leaves shimmer in the wind and emit a rustling sound calm and peaceful like water flowing in a brook, they would put in the garden—the father and his two sons, Pete and Tomás. They would start early, forcing their shovels into the winter-rested earth, bags of peat moss stacked nearby; later, they would spread the dark plant matter, turn the earth again, then form furrows with their hoes, dragging the flat blades through the soft mixture, patting the furrows into place. The mother would then join them for the planting: Starter plants on some furrows, seeds on others. Thus, the ritual every spring, save one when Tomás tired of getting pummeled by the dust on an especially windy Saturday morning, and said so. 

Identical twins, Tomás and Pete often saw eye to eye, though the latter did not speak now. Nor did the father, who continued working the earth.  

“Did you hear me, Dad?” Tomás demanded. “Let’s do this some other time when it’s not so windy.” 

The father paused. “On the contrary, Tomás, the wind is good.”

“But the wind isn’t good!”

“What I mean is, we need the strong spring winds.”

“How can anyone need the winds?” 

“Spring winds,” the father corrected. “And strong.”

“Whatever! How can we work if everything gets blown all over the place?”

“Both of you should welcome the strong spring winds. You know why?”  

“Why, Dad?” Pete asked.  

The father placed his right foot on the shovel step, pressed the blade into the earth and, his right hand clutching the straight handle, smiled.  

“Because agriculture and baseball are distinct but not separate.”

The twins were baseball players, Pete a center fielder, Tomás a first baseman.  Furthermore, the former was a righty, the latter a southpaw, which, as Pete used to joke, made Tomás an odd duck in a right-handed world. Yet, Tomás could not see what agriculture had to do with baseball, nor what distinct had to do with separate, and said so.

The father, a catcher back in the day, let go the shovel handle and explained. 

“Every spring the goddess of agriculture needs the four winds to help awaken the earth. She’s responsible for agriculture, like the baseball gods are responsible for baseball. But although the goddess roams across the earth on the four winds to see to it that spring returns, the baseball gods never leave the Elysian Fields. For them, paradise on earth became a prison–their punishment for allowing Shoeless Joe Jackson to be labeled a cheat with the seven members of the White Sox who threw the 1919 World Series. The Black Sox Scandal. Shoeless Joe hit .375 in thirty-two at-bats in the Series. He had six RBIs, scored five times, threw out five baserunners, made sixteen putouts with one assist, and didn’t make an error. Those who say he intentionally didn’t play as well as he could have never played the great game of baseball. The man was a passable fine ballplayer, all the time! But the baseball gods, well, they fell from grace, and we don’t talk about them much anymore. Still, they are not excused from fulfilling their responsibility, but since they can never leave the Elysian Fields, they must send others to ensure baseball’s return in the spring, to awaken the ballparks, and to watch over the game. You can call them ghosts, or you can call them angels. Same difference. These ghosts are former ballplayers assigned to ballparks. Their reward. But because the Elysian Fields are on the western edge of the earth, the ghosts need to catch a ride with the four winds, going and coming! 

“Between the goddess, the four winds, and the ghosts, agriculture and baseball are part of the same cycle. At about the time the earth awakens, baseball season begins–a type of rebirth, to believers. At about the time the earth goes to sleep, baseball season ends–a type of death, to believers. Now, here’s something to ponder: There is no baseball in the Elysian Fields because the great game of baseball is for mortals. Our reward. What does it tell you that ghosts prefer ballparks to the Elysian Fields? And what does it tell you that the baseball gods can’t even go to a ballgame? But we can.

“The stronger the spring winds, the better, because the lazy earth, having slept all winter, needs help waking up, and because the Elysian Fields are so far away from the ballparks. Why, if we didn’t have strong, spring winds, then we should worry!”

Even as the father’s sonorous voice faded into the sky music the rustling cottonwood leaves made, Tomás looked at Pete, recognizing himself in his brother’s smile, and his brother’s words were his words.

“I say, bring on the spring winds! The stronger the better!”

Hence, Tomás accepted the strong spring winds for what they were, and revered them for what they could be: The grass turns green again, the morning glories climb the back fence again, the flowers and plants push their way out of the ground again, the crops grow again, the garden lives again, the trees, bare and lifeless only weeks before, bust out green again, especially the cottonwood at yard’s edge, the dependable, ancient, tall tree with its haunting wind music, its green catkins in small, grape-like clusters waiting to blossom in the shedding season at the end of June and early July, the cotton flakes floating in the wind as they find their way down, forming a blanket of summer snow, again.  

Not until all of this begins can there be spring planting and spring training, for the old catcher was right, agriculture and baseball are distinct but not separate.

REUBEN SANCHEZ is a retired English professor who specialized in Seventeenth-Century English Literature. He has published books and essays on authors such as John Milton, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare, as well as on subject areas such as Renaissance art and Renaissance melancholy. His baseball fiction has appeared in Southwestern American Literature, Aethlon, Spitball, The Twin Bill, and other journals. He lives in New Mexico.