Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Why I love baseball, part...some-teen

If I'm not going to blog about baseball, what am I going to blog about? Death? Bugs?

(Speaking of bugs...I have said that my house must be built on the biggest anthill on the east coast. I'm afraid that has been confirmed. Now that my basement is beige and light, instead of dark and black, the ants sneaking in from behind the molding really stand out. There must be a crack in the foundation. It's horrifying. I hate resorting to chemical warfare, but obviously I'm not giving over my nice new basement to the ants.)

Now, is that the sort of thing you want to read?

Baseball it is, then!

Sunday's Post had a nice essay, The Gal of Summer, about a woman's season-long experiment in becoming a baseball fan. Unlike the writer, I have been a sports fan since birth, but I can related to some of her baseball experience.

Like understanding that baseball means hope. Early in the article, her husband explains:

"Plus, baseball is a sport for optimists," he says. "It's a very long season with a lot of games, and there is always a reason for hope." That's the kind of baseball-as-metaphor talk that has always made me skeptical...

Me, too.

I got in the car and got the radio on this afternoon halfway through the ninth inning. Of course, I'd been following the game on the internet, so I knew that the Nats had gone down early (5-0 at the end of the third) but that Church had hit a 3-run home run in the sixth. Still, since we were coming up on the end of the batting order and I didn't know who was on the bench to hit, I wasn't especially sanguine.

Then of course, Belliard got a double, Fick singled, and when Hanley Ramirez (ha! take that, Mr. Rookie of the Year!) failed to field Kory Casto's grounder and Fick scored the tying run, I was banging on the steering wheel and cheering like I was there.

(I was stopped at a light. There was a cop in the next lane. I didn't get pulled over.)

After Jorge Julio walked Kerns I was sure the Marlins were going to make a pitching change, and I didn't breathe again until Young's hit. Then you could have heard me at RFK, if not all the way down to Miami.

What a game.

I have seen a few incredible comebacks in hockey, but somehow, it seems like baseball offers a better chance for last second drama, for redemption. More reason for hope.

From the essay:

Cliches are by definition unoriginal. But every now and then the simple truth of one -- like this thing about baseball and hope -- hits you as though someone had written it across the sky for your eyes alone.

Posted by Nic at April 4, 2007 06:07 PM | TrackBack