32 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 32 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 Scipio Africanus: The Man Who Defeated Hannibal by Ross Leicke.

I followed him back across the field where the soil I had just watered was beginning to steam in the strengthening sun. Back on to the path that wandered through the acacia bushes, the brambles and the thorns and opened out back at the well. From there we walked in silence up the street that was Secunium, shabby, dirty, poor. From such as these, I thought again, Rome’s greatness comes. She is the sum of many parts, lives lost, hearts broken, pains borne.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.