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2011 03 17
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Every once in a while you come across someone who questions your love of baseball. "It's boring." "It's slow." "It's old." Sometimes, perhaps so, but so are most things in life. (I mis-typed that as 'love' originally. Perhaps there's something not at all subtly Freudian going on here.) I'd love to wax poetic about the place in my heart occupied by baseball, but I think I'll just wax - with dander down instead of up.
Old? Maybe it is a game for old men, but it's one of the few sports that can be played by anyone, at any age - even the blind. Slow-pitch, softball, big league, little league, age 4, age 84 ... anyone can play it, and you can play it to your grave if you can stand up. What a way to give someone a chance to participate. And when you can't play, you can teach.
The whisper of practice starting in March and April means that spring is close, and summer right around the corner. Even practice is a big draw for some baseball fans, and you don't see that happening a lot elsewhere. As one Eugene Michael Santiago puts it:
"Few sports draw such crowds for the first day of practice. What could be the reason for this? Nice weather and golf? No. The people come out because baseball unlike any other sport -- Baseball becomes part of life, during the regular season. It isn't played once a week on a Sunday, it isn't played every two to three days like the NBA or NHL. Each team plays just about every day, from April to September."
You don't even have to watch baseball to get the thrill. Listening to it is just as much of a joy as watching it can be. There is an intoxicating (and I don't really mean that in the alcoholic sense) charm in a lazy summer afternoon in your back yard, with the tinny AM radio tuned to the local sports station's baseball coverage. There is comfort there, peace, relaxation. And that's the nice thing about baseball - the space and pause as much as the action. A game of baseball gives you a chance for camaraderie you can't acquire with the rapidity of hockey or basketball.
But the action ... oh there is nothing quite like that clutch in your belly when the batter cracks that ball and it goes sailing into the outfield and you wait, hoping, wishing, pushing the ball to sail over the fence - and it does! That's one of the greatest mental adrenaline highs going. And even the action before, the private rituals made so public: the little dance a batter does before squaring himself to the plate; Fernando Valenzuela crossing himself and looking to the heavens; Scott Downs scribing the initials of his children into the dirt of the pitcher's mound before he throws.
For me, also, baseball is one of the few sports I can easily (and enjoyably) follow. My vision is poor, which precludes following rapid sports. I have no idea what's going on in a hockey game, or even football. Baseball though ... I don't have to know where the ball is to know what's going on. I just have to watch the guys on the ground. Is he lazily sauntering towards the 2nd baseline? Is he running in a panic to the left field foul? I know what's happening there.
It was my grandfather who got me hooked. I think that, in some ways, is how one's love of a sport sometimes manifests most strongly, and also why it's sometimes difficult to explain why you love something - if it has become so ingrained a part of you that you can't imagine life devoid of it. I've been watching baseball since I was a small child, remembering classic 70s grudge matches between the Dodgers and the Yankees. I was a Dodgers fan even then. Now? The Phillies. I love me some Blue Jays also. It's the closest thing to a home team I'm ever going to see around here. (For my grandmother's 80th birthday we sent her to a Blue Jays game and had them put a birthday wish to her up on the big screen. There's a photograph of the screen somewhere. All monies raised from such things go towards Blue Jay sponsored charities.)
So, maybe a part of it is just habit, but maybe it's also the promise of spring, summer afternoons, the relief of a long winter gone, the camaraderie of friends, some of the best sports movies going (I've got a big soft spot for Major League and Bob Uecker), the high of playoff games, and a lot of happy memories.