My Dad and I made our annual trek up to Denver to watch the Mets play the Rockies yesterday. Good game. Extra innings. The wrong team won, but baseball is not always about winning. It's about the slow and steady cadence of the game, balls and strikes and outs and innings. The cycling through of the batting orders, one through nine and back again. It's about discussing the game with the people around you, regardless of what jersey they are wearing. It's about the almost mystical recurrence of the number three, and multiples of three, throughout the game. And the gravity and mystique given to other numbers, made famous by uniforms and record books and decades of fans: 7, 42, 61, 511. 60 feet, 6 inches.
And I'm pretty sure baseball is the only sport where everyone stands up and sings together in the middle of the game. Sure, most sporting events begin with everyone taking off their hats and being led through the national anthem. But few sing. Almost everyone sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame. And there's no leader. We do it ourselves.
8 comments:
So true!!! And I too love baseball. We watch the games every chance we can get!
Hugs
SueAnn
"In baseball, you wear a cap!"
Soccer is cool, but it's totally supplanted baseball in my neighborhood's parks.
I wish it could be both. I never see kids playing baseball anymore.
You have the same literary fascination with baseball that I have with boxing. Everything so easily "means" something. I love that.
Sue Ann, I'm trying hard to nurture that love of baseball in my girls. Like the drive-in, it's slowly dying, I fear.
Fresca, baseball is on the wane. Here anyway, though it's alive and kicking in Central America and Japan. There's a 17 year old Japanese woman knuckleballer phenom who might be the US's first woman baseball player. I've subjected my poor daughters to endless hours of video of her.
Clif, it is so effortlessly malleable is the deal (like boxing, I guess). Writing and pitching share so much. Pitch, don't aim. Throw a fastball. follow with a curveball. Change speeds. Trust your natural spin.
Baseball: ten minutes of excitement PACKED into three hours!
:)
funny, meno.
you use the pauses to talk, and drink beer, and eat peanuts.
*SO* much fun.
Very glad that you did that with your dad. Good times.
...the 'wrong' team did not win. The *other* team won. ;D
Scarlett & Viaggiatore
Scarlett, there is no wrong team.
Except the Yankees.
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