Better than seeing the first robin

Bill:
We're knee deep in blazing snow, and what is the harbinger of Spring we are most waiting for?

 

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Mike:
Is it the multiple dull drum of sap in empty pails?

 

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Bill:
Nope.

 

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Mike:
Is it the goat-footed baloonMan whistling far and wee?

 

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Bill:
No, sir, it is not.

 

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Mike:
Is it a Bird in Spring, which for myself doth Sing?

 

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Bill:
Not quite.

 

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Mike:
OK, then how about those pools that, though in forests, still reflect the total sky almost without defect?

 

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Bill:
Nice but you're still not there.

 

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Mike:
Well, then it must be that sometime between 1:30 and 2 p.m. today, the Sox’ equipment truck departs Fenway Park for Fort Myers, for the start of spring training.

 

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Bill:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's Truck Day!

 

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In honor of the unofficial holiday and spring harbinger known as "Truck Day," The Soxaholix present the first ever Truck Day commemorative apparel line …

Yes, the design is cheesy but the intent is earnest.

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Author's Notes
Both the "knee-deep in blazing snow" and "the multiple dull drum of sap in empty pails" lines are from James Hayford's poem "Spring Tide" from the collection Knee-deep In Blazing Snow: Growing Up In Vermont. Other lines from poems used in today's speeches are hyperlinked to a version of the full poem online.

Comments

[vasoxfan]

What baseball blog can quote Dickenson/Frost and Cummings in one day. A literary coup. However, I have to ask, do you really get e.e. cummings or just the fact that he broke from a linear typing mode. I tried in college to "get" him and just couldn't. I tried again today and I still don't get him. Emily and Robert yes but ee no siree.

[COD]

Given the weather, will the trucks really roll today?

[h.b.]

Thanks, Vasoxfan.

As for Cummings (or "cummings" I guess he'd prefer), it's been some time since I've read any of his work other than the two spring poems that I've long since memorized:

+ "Spring is like a perhaps hand"
+ "In just spring."

With those two at least, I definitely get it. In my mind, those two poems capture spring for me as well as anything ever written.

The world really is "mudlucsious" in spring.

[h.b.]

Oh the truck will roll!

Highways are clear, check out the road cams

[hoohooRob in]

My heart springs anew
Toss aside Broadway JohNY
The MOFO Truck Rolls

[birthofasoxfan97]

"So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts."

[vasoxfan]

Well upon further review I guess I like the mudlusciousness of it all. I guess the only one I got in college was "my sweet old etcetera" but that is completely off topic!!( I was much younger then and my sensibilities went a particular direction:))

[vasoxfan]

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/312

[Brian]

What other baseball team celebrates the rolling of the team truck to the spring training facility? Everybody outside of RSN who said "Sox fans will lose interest when they win the World Series" can take a look and then eat their words. These fans don't stop caring.

Now as far as the poetry is concerned, I get lost when nature is described as anything more than what I hear Dick Albert say in the weather report.

[VOODOO VERN]

Is there any chance that the truck could get hi-jacked by the Soprano gang?

[h.b.]

Is there any chance that the truck could get hi-jacked by the Soprano gang?

These days, it's more likely it'd get jacked by the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang.

[louclinton]

Truck Day makes me happy. Lalalalalala.

Mark Loretta is a good guy. Lalalalala.

Shaunnasty is not. Lalalalala.

I have been reading Montville's bio of Teddy Ballgame. It sort of puts Manny in perspective. Give me a savant with cranky ass any day.

[Natalie]

Your marriage of poetry and baseball moves me, h.b., and so I offer a little Wordsworth on this, the occasion of Truck Day. Here's to spring training and a new Olde Town team taking its first steps towards fulfilling our dreams of dynasty:

"Glad sight wherever new with old
Is joined through some dear homeborn tie"

[NV in SD]

Godspeed good Truck. May the nor'easter winds be at your back and the Florida sun sine on your face.

Only. Five. More. Days.

[Bob]

"The greatest ride in my life was about to come up, a truck, with a flatboard at the back, with about six or seven boys sprawled out on it, and the drivers, two young blond farmers from Minnesota, were picking up every single soul they found on that road-the most smiling, cheerful couple of handsome bumpkins you could ever wish to see, both wearing cotton shirts and overalls, nothing else; both thick-wristed and earnest, with broad howareyou smiles for anybody and anything that came across their path. I ran up, said ‘Is there room?’ They said, ‘Sure, hop on, ‘sroom for everybody."

That there is.

[Brian]

I love today's strip, it brings to mind the John Cheevers quote that "All literary men are Red Sox fans."

It's all downhill from here. I'd like to say that I can't remember anticipating a Truck Day so much, but then, we'd have to flash back to me saying the exact same thing in '05, '04, '03, and basically every year Truck day's been something we celebrated.

I love that the sight of a moving truck driving down to Florida can whip us up into a frenzy of excitement, and poetic imagery. Cheers my heart.

[Monty]

I'd never heard of Truck Day before today. But it sure makes me smile!

[Brandon Dawson]

Be warned:

My sources indicate that the so-called Hart Brachen cannot possibly be updating the Soxaholix, as he is currently recuperating from wounds received just a few days ago.

[Gmatt]

Nicely done, Mr. Dawson! Not sure which I liked more, the idea of hunting a covey of CHB, or all the medical staff and ambulances following Cheney wherever he goes...

[Jennay]

I am new to soxaholix - love it. And I had never heard of truck day before either - "hope springs eternal"!