SPORTS April 17, 2006 Issue

'BATTER UP!'

JIM BENCIVENGA

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP in New York, come April, my long winter gave way to the great outdoors. To my boy's heart, Spring and baseball were one and the same. The diamond was my promised land.

To this day, when I hear an umpire call, "Batter up!" for the first game of the season, it is as if the Psalmist had time-traveled to a broadcast booth with a message just for me to hear: "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me" (51:10).

There is something joyous in the sound of a bat smacking a baseball. Something jubilant when a fastball explodes in a catcher's mitt. America's pastime still stirs in me an epiphany of sorts.