On The Turning Of Seasons

Summer solstice plans and Memorial Day Weekend sales

May 25, 2024

The summer solstice may be just under a month away, but culturally we all know Memorial Day is the unofficial kick off to the season. Thinking as the Japanese do of micro-seasons, I like to call the time between Memorial Day and the solstice “soft summer” or “summer, small s”. After the northern hemisphere has reached maximum tilt towards the sun, “Summer, capital s” is, as some of my generation surely still say, “ON”. Inevitably thinking of what’s to come in the season ahead leads me to thinking of where I’ve been in years past, such as the year when I enjoyed driving the 1972 911 S for the weekend thanks to the generosity of a friend or the couple of times I’ve found myself on the shores of Lake Como for the “Concorso d’Eleganza” at Villa d’Este which is exactly as dreamy as it sounds.

Epic drives and events may come and go, but reliably, when Memorial Day rolls around the NBA and NHL playoffs have nearly reached their respective culminations; (Celtics in 5 by the way) and MLB games are just starting to ramp up as the players find that first groove between MDW and the All-Star Game. Even if you don’t follow professional sports, specifically major league baseball (which is the most misunderstood and under appreciated pro sport in America) I hope you can understand how sports mark the turning of the seasons as much as changes in the weather, wardrobes or holidays. If the NBA Finals are on, I know it’s mid-June and the longest day of the year is just around the corner and sometimes the two overlap. Pending some unexpectedly drawn out series for the Celtics, I know that on this year’s solstice I’ll be solely watching the 2024 “Field of Dreams Game” featuring the San Francisco Giants vs the St. Louis Cardinals at the oldest professional ballpark in the country, historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, AL. Rickwood was the home ballpark of living legend Willie Mays when he played with the Birmingham Black Barons as a teenager in the Negro Leagues for 2 years before joining the New York Giants in 1951. Rickwood was also the site of the final Negro League World Series game in 1948 in which Mays’ Black Barons lost to the Homestead Grays, a game which Mays has credited as instilling the drive to succeed in him. The park itself was modeled after Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, holds the distinction of being the first minor league ballpark built from concrete and steel and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. There are so many cultural threads to pull on when it comes to baseball, especially in the south, but the following quote from the 93 year old Mays sums up the significance of the game far better than I ever could and I have to imagine it’ll tug on the heartstrings of even those most disinterested in baseball. “I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see in my lifetime a Major League Baseball game being played on the very field where I played baseball as a teenager. It has been 75 years since I played for the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field, and to learn that my Giants and the Cardinals will play a game there and honor the legacy of the Negro Leagues and all those who came before them is really emotional for me. We can’t forget what got us here and that was the Negro Leagues for so many of us.” Now being a relatively short distance from Birmingham it’s quite temping to take a drive on the longest day of the year and watch the game in some local dive bar near the ballpark. I have to imagine Mays will be in attendance, even though he’s an elderly man he still exudes the energy that made him “the say hey kid”. Thinking of Mays watching the game he loves so deeply be played on what will hopefully be beautiful summer day at that park, it fills me with joy. And that, above all else is the feeling I associate with Summer.