Regeneration

What the 2001 baseball season holds in store, no one quite knows. Everyone has a chance to dream, at least for a few weeks. The Montreal Expos, a team that has won its division only once in franchise history and plays in front of about six fans a game, is near the top of the National League East. Both the free-spending New York Mets and the perennially-successful Atlanta Braves trail the upstarts. The Expos may not be there in September—they ought not to be there in September—but, for a week they should, they must, believe that they can be.

There is poignant symbolism in baseball’s return from its enforced hibernation. The season of regeneration is upon us, whether we’re fans or not. It’s time to rouse ourselves for new challenges, to confront old problems in fresh and productive ways, to remember what makes life worth living.

As the weather improves, we should raise our heads from our books and set aside pen and paper, if only for a little bit. It is time to go outside and play in the Yard. Harvard students may well have no peers in terms of physics equations or literary essays, but they need to work just as hard to enjoy themselves outside the classroom.

There is pleasure in a well-written paper. There is pleasure in balancing a complex equation. But there are other pleasures in life. And they are just as important. Maybe just for an hour, maybe just for a day, students need to dream about a world with seasonal pleasures in addition to the constant backdrop of work. We too can be the Expos, even if our pleasure is similarly fleeting.

Everyone has a paper due tomorrow or a problem set next week. Classes do not change with the seasons. As a result, it’s easy to miss the coming of spring in the blur of Harvard life, but this does not make it right. This is an explanation, not an excuse.

The regeneration of spring certainly pervades the world at large, even if it passes undergraduates by. The newly-admitted Class of 2005 is enjoying its last few months of senior spring. Harvard’s next president readies himself to assume control of us all as spring fades to summer.

We should take advantage of these times because before we know it, the Yard will again be covered in snow. Or maybe we won’t even be living in Cambridge. Sometimes you don’t know how good something is until it’s gone. This spring, let’s strive to defeat that maxim.

Will the Red Sox win the World Series this year for the first time since they traded Babe Ruth? No one can say for sure. But if any baseball fans want to go down to Fenway, grab a hot dog and find out in person, they need not look far for company.

—Anthony S.A. Freinberg