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.
