The Return of Baseball and Springing Forward
The early spring-like weather has made it difficult to concentrate on any one subject for too long. With that disclaimer, I’ll try and cover a few items this week which have been on my mind of late.
•For some reason, I am really looking forward to the start of the new baseball season. I’m not talking about high school baseball, which I always enjoy, but rather Major League Baseball, which, for some time, has not really held my interest.
Maybe it’s because there is a growing sense of optimism around the Atlanta Braves or maybe it’s because baseball certainly means a new spring season is here again as well. Whatever the reason, the first Braves preseason game is set Saturday for those interested and I count myself as one.
•We are set to “spring forward” in a few more weeks and I, for one, am more than glad. For whatever reasons there were for making it where it gets dark part of the year by 5:30 p.m., it is time for it to end. In the winter months I think we actually need more daylight.
Perhaps we should start a movement to permanently spring forward and never fall back again. If anyone gets a petition started, I’ll be more than happy to sign it.
•The NBA All-Star game has to be even more of a waste of time than the NFL Pro Bowl. Perhaps it draws good ratings (I’m not sure to be honest) but it is in no way a legitimate game and needs to be revamped or done away with.
•In the political world, the fact that 18 candidates signed up for the special election to fill the vacant seat left by Tom Price (who has joined President Donald Trump’s administration) shows how coveted seats in Congress are.
The 6th Congressional District (which does not cover Jasper County) special election will be in April with a runoff all but a certainty.
•The return of spring also means a return of yard work. In recent years, yard work has become a stress reliever for me. It’s funny how something that I viewed as a necessary evil once upon a time has become something I look forward to.
•A conversation about newspapers recently had a person ask me if I thought printed publications would continue to be around next 10-15 years.
I’ve written about this in the past, but I believe the future of printed journalism rests in the publications such as the one you are reading. Hometown papers such as The Monticello News will always have a readership base because it provides information no other paper does.
Each week in our hometown paper, we get to read about local government meetings, local obituaries, local school news, local classified advertising, our local athletic teams and even the musing of hometown columnists.
The larger, daily newspapers, including the ones that used to serve Jasper County, have become a shell of what they were even 25 tears ago. Local papers are the long-term future of print journalism and will remain even after the dailies are gone.
As for our local publication, I know there are many who continue the tradition of buying it on Wednesday evening, not long after it returns from the printer. That dedication is what will keep hometown papers going for the long haul
Monticello native Chris Bridges is a long-time newspaper columnist. He welcomes feedback from readers of The Monticello News at pchrisbridges@gmail.com.