One more spring

 There was a ballgame on the radio, that April day. The sun was shining. Spring was suddenly no rumor, nor the fever-dream of souls sick of battlement-gray winter, nor even the false spring of March, faithless liar that it is. 

There was a ballgame on the radio that day.

There will be another one on the radio today.

Is it really possible 30 years separate the two?

Thirty years of minor-league baseball here in the Fort, and, whew, time flies. The 68-year-old driving this sentence was two years shy of 40 then. Bill Clinton had been in the  White House less than three months. And a 21-year-old kid from Venezuela was out there on the bump in Waterloo, Iowa, delivering pitches for a spanking new Minnesota Twins low-A affiliate called the Fort Wayne Wizards.

Thirty years later they've been re-branded the Fort Wayne TinCaps, and they're the high-A jewel in the San Diego Padres system. The Padres' top prospect, Jackson Merrill, will start at shortstop today. He's not yet 20 years old.

Thirty years of minor-league baseball in Fort Wayne. Hardly seems possible, until you think about all the years that came before.

We're a hockey town now as well as a baseball town, but before that, baseball defined us. The newly-formed National League was born here in 1871, when the Fort Wayne Kekiongas played the first game in league history against the Cleveland Forest Citys. The Kekiongas won, 2-0. A kid named Bobby Mathews, all of 20 himself, got the shutout.

And there would be more, so much more, down the road. There would be a black team called the Fort Wayne Colored Giants that played to overflow crowds on a ballfield just west of where traffic on North Clinton now rushes past. There would be the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, and Red Braden's GE Voltmen.

There would be, among others, Chuck Klein and Steve Hargan and Matt Kinzer. Mike Roesler and Dave Doster and Kevin Kiermaier. Josh Van Meter from just down the road in Ossian, and Eric Wedge from Northrop High School, your American League Manager of the Year in 2007.

But never an oh-fficial MLB farm team until Eric Margenau brought the Kenosha Twins to Fort Wayne in 1993.

The night of the first home game was gray and wet and raw, but Memorial Stadium was packed and Ramon Valette hit the first home run and the home team got the W. And again there would be more, so much more, down the road.

That first summer a rangy kid from Gary with lightning in his arm -- LaTroy Hawkins was his name -- went two months without losing. The next summer, a young outfielder named Torii Hunter made catches that had sportswriters grabbing their heads in disbelief up in the pressbox. That same season, someone named Alex Rodriguez hit his first professional home run here while playing for the Appleton Foxes.

And, of course, a whole bunch of other major leaguers played here, from A.J. Pierzynski  to Fernando Tatis Jr.

And that 21-year-old kid from Venezuela?

Memory blurs as to whether he pitched the first game or the second of that doubleheader in Waterloo three decades ago. But his name was Ron Caridad, and he's 51 now. These days he lives in Miami, where he owns a floor installation business.

The Wizards split a pair that day, winning the first and losing the second.

It was early April, and the sun was shining, and a certain 38-year-old had the windows open and the ballgame on the radio, and can it really be 30 years already? Can it really?

Damn right it can.