WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Diamonds: a boy’s best friend

You probably don’t need to be told that baseball is back. It never comes too soon for me.

When I was a kid, baseball was the first great thing I could actually participate in. I originally wanted to be a cowboy, but my parents told me we weren’t getting a horse. You can’t be a cowboy without a horse.

Then I discovered there was a place grown-up heroes played where you could hit things with a stick. Anybody can get a stick. The rest is history, if only personal history.

I liked to play that game. I liked the ball, the bat, the glove, the mound, the wood, the leather, the chalk and the dust.

Ballfield dust was light and soft, and made clouds over my sneakers. I wasn’t fond of any other dust, but baseball dust was privileged, special. Dramatic dirt. That’s why some grown-up men want their remains sprinkled on a pitcher’s mound somewhere someday — to be part of that particular dirt.

I liked to watch the game, too. And read about it. I bought the baseball cards. I bought the whole deal. And despite its ups and downs through the years, I still do.

Baseball is a thread that runs through your life and ties it together in your head.

What for non-fans may be little more than an unconnected series of events is anchored for the fan to whether they occurred the same year the Royals beat the Cardinals in the Series on that bad call at first base, or the year the Angels finally won it all.

This is a special season for me. Fifty years ago my father took me to my first game at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Ernie Banks played shortstop for the Cubs. After Roy Rogers, he was my first hero.

This year the Cubs have unveiled a statue of Ernie outside Wrigley, and a movie is coming out in July that I worked on and in which Ernie appeared as himself. I got to meet him on that movie set. This sort of thing only happens in dreams, or once in a lucky lifetime.

The Cubs, meanwhile, are nearing a less happy milestone.

They have a talented team, a team some are picking to win the World Series, but things have gone wrong before. In fact, things have gone wrong for 99 years in a row.

They haven’t even been to the World Series in my lifetime, and that’s getting to be a goodly span.

So it’s a special, if potentially embarrassing, season in Wrigleyville. But then every team has a continuing drama unfolding, so it’s a historic season everywhere in some regard.

My advice is for you to tie your life together by getting out to see the Angels, or up to see the Dodgers, or down to see the Padres, or over to see the Laguna Beach High School ball team play this year. Get a look at some of that special dirt.

SHERWOOD KIRALY is a Laguna Beach resident. He has written four novels, three of which were critically acclaimed.