Green Day

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the
spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer,
filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come,
it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to
buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive,
and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it
stops.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, excerpted from Green Fields of the
Mind

With much respect to the late Commissioner, whose words have ended seasons here at MLC in the past, I took the liberties of updating his sublime coda. I hope he’d approve:

It breaks your heart and it lifts your soul. It is designed to do both at intervals. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains stand ready to wash away another season, time stops for one glorious week. The Indian summer sun bathes you in its comforting glow before fading and leaving you to face the fall alone but for the long-lingering warmth of your memories. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it delivers again. And begins once more in the spring.