Baseball is just a game. It's strange how a game can have so much meaning for a person...or a family...or a community...a city...a nation. The game has a power that draws people in so much that they love it whether the game loves them back or not. People give the game all that they have. They pray for it. They defend it. They cry, they laugh, and they rage about even the smallest detail of it. To some, it means everything. I am one of those.
Baseball is my grandpa at the age of 72 hitting fly balls to my cousin and I as kids on a hot, Texas, summer afternoon. It's fighting back tears at the end of the season in little league where I learned to accept loss. It's avoiding sports radio or TV after a heartbreaking loss. It's playing catch with my dad outside after he got back from work. It's my grandma's stories of heckling and flirting with Pete Reiser, Duke Snyder, and Dixie Walker at Ebbet's Field. It's pretending to be Nolan Ryan while pitching. It's socks rolled up into balls and bases made of furniture in games played with my brother and sister. Baseball is what stopped my classmates from making fun of me at school. It's the "temple" that I go visit when I want to be alone. It's lining up buckets and mattresses at the barn, to throw at 200ft away to practice long-toss. It's hating the New York Yankees. It's habits and superstitions. It's sleepless nights caused by missed opportunities. Baseball is stick-bats, stone-balls, and candy-wrapper bases on the playground. It's long socks and a new cap and belt.
It's scars from diving for catches. It's the smell of a field of cut grass and the leather of a glove. It's Eric Nadel's voice at night in my dad's truck. It's 3 hours that bore most people but have me on the edge of my seat. It's Michael Young. It's batting cages for hours with my teammates. It's the reason my family had lawn chairs (so they could watch me and my brother play). It's a brotherhood of friends that I made in any American city that I have lived in. It's disappointment. It's coaches telling me that I have the "green light". It's player's cards and plastic cups from the ballpark. It's girlfriends never understanding why I would breakout of my stoic nature for a game. It's watching Neftali Feliz strike out Alex Rodriguez to go to the Texas Rangers' first World Series. It's spending two years with shovels in our front pasture building a ball field. It's a game I've played every year of my life since I was 5. It's not blaming the umpire because there were countless other chances to succeed on my own. Baseball is my first love, and I will never be unfaithful to her.
