It has been my experience that the game of baseball will break your heart.
This heartbreak starts young with some baseball fans. The game of baseball was incorporated into their DNA when they were exposed to the game on television, or maybe by playing stickball in the street, or perhaps it happened when they gathered together with other neighborhood kids on a dusty piece of land that would yield memories for a lifetime. The point being that when you embrace something magical early in your life, you can count on a life of ebb and flow as you grapple with your passion.
There is another path into the game of baseball, of course, and that is through our Fathers. If you were lucky, your dad taught you not only the basic skills of the game but the nuance details that separate the observer from the participant. He decoded the unwritten rules of the game and if you were really fortunate, passed on his love of the game till it also became your game, and the two became one. At that point, his favorite players became your favorite players and the eternity of the game took one giant step. I mean, is there a greater memory than having your dad lead you by the hand through a concrete labyrinth until suddenly, you glimpse a view of paradise, and perfection became personified in your mind?
Whatever and whoever your dad loved with regard to baseball, chances are you too have been infused with that same passion, carrying with you the unquestioning, unblinking, dedication of a true believer. You have been indoctrinated into a mystical fellowship, with a passion that will not give you up, but mark my words, baseball will break your heart.
There was a time, I’m ashamed to admit, when the love of baseball fled from my heart.
I was never very good at playing the game myself, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort. Perfecting my skills in the heat and dust of summer was a ritual for me as a child and above all I yearned for the game to embrace me the way that I embraced her. Alas, it was not meant to be.
So I gave her up.
But here is the thing about baseball, though your passion may have waned, your heart still holds a special regard for the game, buried perhaps, but still present. You are one moment, one sensory experience away from rekindling the love of your youth. That is the curse / advantage to having baseball as part of your DNA, it changes you forever.
The Tennessee Vols baseball team won 50 games this season. Optimism was born where it had never grown before and excitement started to build as they made their way through the regionals, and then the super regionals and finally to the College World Series itself in Omaha!
But baseball can be a tempermental mistress, and what worked yesterday can become futile to try to replicate today. Bats that were on fire suddenly can't connect with the wind. Sure handed infielders are cursed with hands of stone. Monteum rises and falls until it crashes with one final groan and hope is extinguished like the popping of a balloon. What was once inevitable becomes unattainable and the world becomes a darker place.
Baseball will break your heart.
On a soft summer day, one of those days when the wind caressed your face with almost continual attention, I went to my first ball game in years. It was a minor league game, but the experience was like walking back in time. The scene shifted to black and white, and the sounds became more pronounced, smells of popcorn and hot dogs invaded my brain, and I was transformed. In an instant, apathy slinked away like a unwanted acquaintance and we were back! Summer and baseball had reconnected in my life and that was that.
I started rereading my favorite books on the greats of the game and purchased a newspaper subscription (pre-internet) so I could follow the Braves. My brother and I reconnected through our love of baseball and the game grew in importance. Minor league games were the games of choice, being that my economic situation didn’t lend itself to season tickets for the majors. But that was okay – in fact, it was preferred. The intimacy, the unity of watching with my fellow tribe was intoxicating. It amplified our devotion to our city and its team as they fought to make us proud. (Okay, I realize I got carried away with the last sentence but I’m going to let it stand because that is what I prefer to believe)
The Chattanooga Lookouts are a minor league team that as been around since Babe Ruth. They have occupied old stadiums with character to spare and their new digs that can perhaps be most kindly described as their new home. But the fact remains, a loyalty was born and the game was alive for me for the first time in years!
Baseball has a unique rhythm, a cadence that slows down time, at least in the stadium, for countless people around the country. The hope of new life with each new batter, the slowly dying dreams that occur after each out. There exists a powerful current that requires your attention, that calls you to disengage all other thoughts, slowly focusing your attention to the diamond, softly glowing in the sunlight. It is an all-consuming passion, an obsession perhaps, but a friend none the less. The joy that exists when the hometown team rises to the occasion in the bottom of the ninth, carrying the crowd to unexplored heights. Voices shouting in unison, clapping without end, desperate to convey our gratitude to the players who have rewarded our loyalty. Until tomorrow we say to each other, reluctant to leave the shrine, freshly anointed with our shouts of happiness.
Of course, the opposite occurs more often than not.
Baseball is summer but the game culminates in the fall. Where heartbeats rise with each pitch, each collision at the plate bringing untold consequences, heroes forming before our very eyes. Who would not want to capture that feeling forever? Watching men with our own eyes, joining the pantheon of legends, their stories added to the eternity of the game. Who could not love baseball?
As I get older, I become more convinced that baseball is a gift from God. It combines so many things that He loves, things like slowing down, patience, hope, gratitude, unity, and joy. It reminds me of a friend of mine who loved to watch “Field of Dreams”. His emotional response to the movie was mostly triggered by the Father and Son conversation that occurs toward the end of the movie. I also love that movie, but my emotional response comes from watching the players of old take the field with childhood abandon. It immediately transports me back to the clay field of my childhood and gathering up enough neighborhood kids to make two teams, kicking the rocks off the basepaths, and yearning to recreate the feel of the bat and a well-placed double. Baseball is a gift, it can be many things to many people but mostly it is a reminder of the good things in our lives. Friends, memories, the sights, sounds and smells of a shared experience. Baseball is a game that can be played when you are young but loved when you are old.
Yes, baseball will break your heart. But it can also give you back your heart, strengthen friendships, expand your passion, and if you are lucky, remind of your long lost childhood. The game can inspire and create memories with one fell swoop, etching forever into your minds the events of the past.
The poet and essayist Charles Siebert said it best,” None of us can go to a ball game, I think, without, in some way, being reminded of your best hopes, of your earlier times, some memory of your best memory. It’s always nostalgic even when it’s most vital and present. We shouldn’t be in awe of it, fall down in a heap about it. It’s not paradise but it’s as close as you’re going to get to it in America.”
How can you not love baseball?
