baseball oh baseball.
Every year is the year that I say I won't care anymore. The Braves have blown it again in October, the players union is arrogant and ruining the game, the owners are arrogant and ruining the game, the price of beer at a game requires you to take out a loan just to buy one, the players are hopped up on steroids and my team just traded my favorite player and on and on, blahdiddyblah yada yada.
And yet as spring emerges from the dark, cold winter I am again awakened to the crack of a bat, the roar of the crowd, the cajoling of the beer vendor. Surely, for me and many, football is the number one game now, but baseball, oh baseball, is the soundtrack always playing in the background of your spring, summer and early fall. Every team still has a chance, rookies are trying to make the team, and just like with spring, every thing seems new and possible.
Baseball has it's problems. So many of them mirror the problems of American. But so many of the triumphs mirror America as well. Hammerin' Hank Aaron broke through the barely opened color barrier and went on to overcome hate and overwhelming odds to hold the most vaunted of all records, the home run record of Babe Ruth. Last year the Florida Marlins with a fraction of the payroll of other teams won the World Series. In baseball like America, anything is still possible.
Last year on a business trip to Chicago, I ditched the meetings one afternoon and took the El over to old Wrigley field to watch a game. As I sat in the chaos of the bleacher bums sipping a cold beer in the warm sunshine, I thought of my Dad who loves baseball. He used to tell me about going to the bronx to see Mickey Mantle and the Yankees when he was stationed there in the Marines. So I called him on the cell and shared a moment or two describing the scene to him and told him to flip on the TV and watch me that I would catch a Sosa home run. Sammy did park one but it cleared the bleacher and hit the street below where kids were waiting with gloves to catch it.
Maybe baseball has seen better days but it's a link to our past that connects generations.
So yeah, I'm sucked in again. The soundtrack of my summer will be turned on once again.