72 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 72 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 book is Seasons in Hell by Mike Shropshire. He chronicles his time as a Texas Ranger beat writer in this book. This passage is a snapshot of the times late in the 1973 season.

David Clyde’s resounding, albeit improbable, triumph on the banks of the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike elevated the morale of the whole state. When Clyde’s stats were flashed on the garish scoreboard in the Astrodome, Houston fans responded with a standing ovation.

In truth, the spirits of most Texans were already stimulated by a long-awaited even in Austin, the signing of the bill that reinstated the death penalty. Unrestrained joy not seen since the repeal of Prohibition greeted this measure. That same year, somebody was campaigning for the governorship of Alabama with the slogan: “I want to fry ‘em until their eyeballs pop out and green and yellow smoke comes out of their ears.” Texas’ own governor, Dolph Briscoe, clearly lacked the zeal of the Alabama politician. But Briscoe did sign the bill with the same pen that a deputy sheriff in San Antonio was using to write a traffic ticket when some goon gunned him down. Briscoe would be re-elected the next year, and overwhelmingly.

In Atlanta, the same week of David Clyde’s celebrated launch, Hank Aaron was belting career homerun numbers 696 and 697. In California, Nolan Ryan was pitching his second no-hit game of the season. And in Luckenbach, Texas, Willie Nelson and other notables of what was then known as the progressive country music movement performed an outdoor concert before thousands of adoring “dope smokin’ goat ropers.”

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.