159 Days to Opening Day 2008

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That was 159 days from October 28. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

The book from 10/28 was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Roaring 20’s and all it entails.

The excerpt is from page 159, which happens to be the final page of the edition of the book that I have. Nick, the narrator, reflects on Gatsby in the final three paragraphs of the novel.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning ------

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Put the October 28 entry into a baseball context.