I grew up in a baseball family, albeit a nontraditional one. It was my mother and grandmother who had season tickets to the Phillies games, fantastic seats that were quite literally seven rows behind home plate, next to the scouts. I grew up in the concrete donut that was Veterans Stadium, never appreciating it. I have vivid memories of Sunday afternoon games in the hot, humid Philadelphia summers, my freckled skin slathered with heavy sunscreens and the backs of my legs stuck to the blazing hot dark brown seats of The Vet’s 1970s color scheme. I spent most of my time reading books.
Most of our vacations involved trips to other ballparks. By the time I was in college, I’d been to Three Rivers in Pittsburgh; Shea and Yankee in New York; both Memorial Stadium and Camden Yards in Baltimore; Fenway in Boston; Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta; Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park in Chicago; Olympic Stadium in Montreal; Exhibition Stadium in Toronto and countless minor league parks. I chatted with ballplayers, coaches, managers and scouts as though they were just regular people from the neighborhood; to me, they were. I’ve been to 10 more since then, and I still believe that there is no more perfect place to watch a game than Wrigley.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with the sport. I left baseball for a few years after the 1994 strike, disgusted by what the game had become. I came back with everyone else for the rise of the steroid era, watching Mark McGwire work his magic. Unlike most people, I gave him a pass because I can remember being at Fenway, watching batting practice, when this scrawny kid took his swings for the A’s and belted one home run after another over the green monster. “Who is that guy?” I remember asking. I fundamentally believe that the rookie kid I saw that day could have broken the home run record even without steroids. I deeply wish that he had.
In spite of all of that, I find that I have returned to the game yet again. It’s not my lifelong, long-distance love for the Cubs that made me come back (although I’m wishing them all the best). Instead, it’s my 2-year-old son, who from his first sentient moments has been as deeply in love with the game as my mother and grandmother ever were. I suspect that it’s a recessive gene. As the air grows crisp, and the postseason is on the horizon, we’re faced with explaining to a toddler why there is no baseball on TV tonight.
Baseball parallels life. It emerges from the short, dark days of winter with the first days of spring training in February. Suddenly, the winter doesn’t seem as long, for as sure as the daffodils will poke their heads from the ground, the promise of another spring is in the air. We live through the languid days of summer, the early September pennant race frenzy that mirrors our own frantic attempts to squeeze the most that we can out of the last warm days, and ends in October with long sleeves, cold nights and four months of hibernation as we wait for those four magical words: pitchers and catchers report.
Until then, he’ll have to make do with playing t-ball in the backyard. I can imagine the joy on his face when “the baseballs are on TV” once again.
(Go Cubbies!)