52 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 52 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 The Wars of the Ancient Greeks by Victor Davis Hanson.

Still, there were countless tasks for all infantrymen of the phalanx as it pounded the enemy. Hoplites – the name probably derives from hopla, the Greek word for their heavy battle gear – in the initial ranks sought targets with their spears, all the while searching for protection for their vulnerable right flanks in the round shields of the men at their sides. Some struggled to step over the debris of fallen equipment and the detritus of the wounded and dead at their feet, striving always to keep their balance as they pushed and were pushed into the enemy spears at their faces.

All the hoplites in the killing zone kept their own 20-pound (9-Kg) shield chest high to cover themselves and the men on their own immediate left. Thus all at once hoplites might feel steady pressure from the rear, dodge enemy spearpoints and friendly spear-butts in their faces, stab and push ahead, accommodate comrades shoving from the left to find protection, seek their own cover by nudging to friends’ shields on their right, and nearly trip over wounded bodies, corpses, and abandoned equipment that was lying at their feet.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.