A few kids were talking about these things yesterday in the Red Sox' clubhouse. Well, they're not kids anymore. They are in their 20s and 30s and 50s now. They are big leaguers, three days away from yet another Opening Day. They still smile when you ask about the day they slipped on a uniform for the first time.

''I was 8 years old,'' 29-year-old Tony Clark said. ''It was in Lemon Grove, Calif., and my team was the Phillies. Man. Our uniforms were red, blue, and white. Navy blue, actually. I remember our opening day, with the banners and flags flying. I thought the stands were packed, but it was really 30 or 40 people. All of them parents.''

Clark's father, Arthur, was the Phillies' manager. The manager made his son the opening day starter.

''Oh, do I remember that,'' Clark said as he pulled on his long red socks. ''I gave up a home run. I remember throwing it down and in, and the lefty caught it and hooked it off the foul pole. I sat down on the mound and started crying. I had never given up a home run before.

''My dad came out and said, `You can quit and let me bring somebody else in here, or you can finish the job.' I finished the job.''

As Clark talked, workers ran around the clubhouse. Yesterday was the Red Sox version of the last day of school. They are moving out of Florida after six weeks of spring training. They will start the season and have the same thoughts they had when they were small: How am I going to play? And can we win it all?

Twenty-six years ago, a child in Maracay, Venezuela, had similar questions. If a bat was lying around, Rich Garces would grab it. If not, he'd find a piece of wood. He'd hit baseballs. He'd hit rocks. He loved the pace of the game. The sound of it. The smell of it.

On opening day, he played for a team called the Coquitos.

''I'm not sure what that is,'' he said. ''It's some kind of animal. Some kind of bug or something.''

The Coquitos wore red, white, and blue uniforms.

''I was 4 when I first played for them,'' the 30-year-old Garces said. ''I played all the positions, bro. I just loved to play. I couldn't sleep the night before games, so I would be up real early, asking my mom to take me to the stadium.''

When you love baseball that much, you see its art when others merely see its white lines. Watch Garces on the mound. A lot of fans joke about his size, but there aren't many stories about his intensity. You can watch him and tell that he once was a 4-year-old boy who lost sleep over baseball.

His current teammates now pay him the ultimate baseball tribute. They wear his uniform. They all have Sox shirts in their lockers with Garces's nickname (El Guapo) and his number (34).

If you walked away from Garces's locker here and made a right, you could hear the moving trucks idling outside. The Sox' equipment was being packed and transported back to Boston. Standing nearby was a man who helps decide what men will enter Fenway Park and put on Red Sox uniforms.

''I was 3 years old the first time I put on a uniform,'' said 56-year-old Mike Port. ''My dad played with a church softball team in Escondido, Calif. The uniforms were gray and blue. I was only a spectator, but I remember being hit with a foul ball. I also remember being terribly embarrassed about it.''

Fifty-three years later, Port is the Sox' interim general manager. Port is full of baseball stories. He remembers listening to games on the radio when he was supposed to be sleeping. He remembers thinking that Rod Carew was an artist who happened to compose with a bat.

Baseball is a poet's sport. You understand what that means when you listen to the baseball stories. The poetry is not in the numbers. It's in the way young players and older coaches, regardless of their shapes, proudly step into their uniforms on Opening Day.

They did that in 1949 in California. They did it in '76 in Venezuela. They'll do it in Boston Monday afternoon.

Michael Holley is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is holley@globe.com.

This story ran on page D5 of the Boston Globe on 3/29/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.