142 Days to Opening Day 2008

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 142 days from today. 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.

Today’s excerpt is from Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

This passage is as Winston looks out a window above the bookstore where he and Julia have met.

Winston gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain. Down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and fro between the washtub and the line. She took two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling:

"They sey that time ‘eals all things,

They sey you can always forget;

But the smiles an’ the tears across the years

They twist my ‘eartstrings yet!”

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.