Take Me Out to the Ballpark

As April begins, the doldrums inspired by a Northwest winter begin to fade. The stage is being opened as baseball fields across North America are manicured with a standard of care rarely seen outside the walls of Augusta National. Hundreds of thousands of players, ranging from grizzled veteran specialist relievers to six-year old teeballers, will play organized baseball in the months to come. Tens of millions will witness the games, and each individual's experience will be different. Some spectators are avid fans, keeping score by hand while listening to the local radio broadcast on handsets so technologically anachronistic that you now have to go to a second-hand store to find one. Other visitors to the park may care less about the particulars, attending to cheer on their favorite player, their spouse or children. Still others will be there simply based on consequence-- being drug along by a Fever Pitch-like spouse or succumbing to the siren's song of dollar beer night. All of these characters and more are on display nearly every night at a baseball park near you.

My love of baseball, like many other avid fans, stems from my childhood. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family and neighborhood that supported outdoor recreation, including baseball. I treasure memories of slapping a Wiffle ball over a chain link fence and, later, encountering for the first time the realm of competitive sports and, as often the youngest participant, the concepts of hierarchy and machismo. Equally rewarding were trips to Busch Stadium attending St. Louis Cardinals games, where I saw greats such as Ozzie Smith in the prime of his career and oddities like backup catcher Glen Brummer (4 career stolen bases) stealing home plate in the extra-innings of the second game of a midsummer doubleheader. I continued playing baseball, first at catcher, then right field and, on a very few occasions late in that period, as a pitcher. At age 15, other organized sports began to dominate my time and baseball's importance began to fade from my memory.

In the summer of 2002, I fell in love with baseball again, but this time as a spectator. During that time, I was working extremely long hours in a job and city that had closed in around me. All the concrete, collating and commuting created in me an unconscious yearning for things pastoral. I only found succor by happenstance-- a chance encounter with an old friend that had tickets for that evening's Mets game. I don't remember much of anything about the opponent or outcome, but everything about the sights, sounds and spirit of the ballpark that night. For the first time in years, I was back in the stands, amongst the fray Americana, this time at Shea Stadium. Adults cursing in the company of toddlers, $7 beers disappearing into the bellies of middle-aged men and women faster than the chances for democracy in Iraq, and women dressed in clothes that clearly indicated their concerns were aimed at an entirely different kind of box score-- all these sights and more captured my attention, freeing me from the shackles of my urba-corprafessional existence. In an odd way, I felt more a part of the New York City community that evening than I ever did, before or after the episode. This wildly diverse population gathered around the diamond with individual agendas but shared an experience of community and focus, if only for select moments: the National Anthem, the first pitch. I'm among a select few who will never forget the foul ball laced towards the home dugout, flying over our heads, and coming to its first resistance-- a hard, twined missile meeting flush the forehead of one truly unfortunate. Paying attention to nothing other than her cellphone, the poor girl never saw it coming. An admittedly larger fraction of fans collectively suffered the seemingly endless number of planes departing La Guardia, and surely the seventh inning stretch and sing meets that criteria as well. The girl hit by the ball? While seemingly recovered of her faculties upon receiving seat-side care, I doubt she'll see much of worth in this essay.

After that evening, I made the baseball park my refuge. Over time, I joined fantasy leagues, absorbed statistics and learned baseball strategy, technique and history. Having this knowledge enhances my current experiences at the park, and I now look back on my baseball youth (and to some extent general youth) with some disdain, for I failed at that time to contemplate the significance or complexities of the game I was playing. In those days it was close your eyes and swing as hard as you can; throw it as hard and fast as you can. Strategy was never learned, technique never sought and history inconsequential-- the perfect form of childrens' entertainment, but an endless source of regret for we thirty-year old arm-chair athletes.

So now I go to the park for the game, where informed observation gives me endless pleasure as each day I can witness the competition, with the joy of winning and quizzical gapes of disappointment on display for all to see, each and every night over the course of a long season. If you come out often enough, you'll see the both the best and the worst of our species. I've witnessed the excitement of a rookie pitcher throwing a brilliant no-hitter on the road, standing triumphantly before a cheering throng that fate will likely never embellish upon him again. I've also seen managers throw tirades that would stun even the most unruly of infants.

And it's not only managers that misbehave on the field-- baseball has a long history of players losing their wits and assaulting other players, sometimes even fans. In one famous incident, Ty Cobb allegedly (I wasn't there--here's the best source I found) climbed in the stands to reprimand a heckler, mercilessly beating the disabled man, who was equipped with only one hand, albeit of three fingers.

The legend continues that Cobb was suspended and, three days later, went to the park that day with his teammates. When Cobb was refused entry onto the field, his teammates protested, refusing to play. Team management was prepared, and fielded a contingent of semi-pro players hurriedly stitched together only hours before. Allen Travers was the only pitcher on the roster that day, tossing all eight frames, surrendered 14 earned runs on 26 hits en route to a 24-2 whitewashing. Travers never played another major league game and, after a life as an educator, died in 1968. Cobb watched the game from the stands, returning to the professional game days later. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 by 98.23% of those voting.

That is baseball to me-- the shared experience occasionally sprinkled with heroic triumph and ghastly misdeed, every game at every level being played by the same rules and holding the same initial possibility of greatness. What more can one ask for from a summer's evening?

Finally, a word on the present state of Major League Baseball. While many bemoan the presence of performance-enhancing drugs in the sport and others immerse themselves in statistics and decry a perceived lack of parity in the leagues, I stridently ignore such balderdash, believing that baseball, as a shared experience, is reflective of society. People cheat and score is always being kept--if players are stupid enough (and owners greedy enough to allow players) to risk health and future compensation for additional strength in a game that demands precision, not brawn, then that's their fault, not the game's. The game is still pure, despite the protestations of biased writers and morons barking on sports talk radio. Outside of the pundits, a cottage industry of insidious stat-checkers has sprung up and all of the sudden half of the world believes it can predict the outcome of an entire baseball season months in advance of its actual conclusion. Certainly a club's money and its players' statistics matter to some extent, but each game starts with a clean slate, 0-0 with at least twenty-seven chances to score. The performances of each individual day in the context of an entire season are the meat of baseball, not an extended streak of excellence or a career of legendary long balls. Today's superstar may be tomorrow's journeyman minor leaguer. While I'm not often wont to support Joe Morgan, he did make his one excellent point of this season already, quipping on Opening Day, "you can use statistics to embellish the point, just don't let it be the point." Statistics alone can never predict a particular success or failure, and certainly can't capture the most important aspect of the game-- how will that player perform today?

So, this summer, I hope you may benefit from the contents of this essay as I have for seasons past. Take yourself out to the ballpark. Sneak in some peanuts and cracker jacks. Pay attention to the game if you want, but definitely pay attention for foul balls. Cheer for the players or get wasted and heckle the other team and umpires: the ballpark is your stage too. My bet is that you won't care if you ever come back. Play ball!