Baseball is one of those rare games that elicits feeling. You almost can't go to a small league game and not think of better times, easier times. Hotdogs, family and children all rolled up into one sport. The game rarely pulls forth the raw emotions of other more competitive games. As a fan of baseball, things run a little hot and cold but you almost never want to smash that fat guy standing next to you pulling for the wrong team. In fact you might sit there perfectly content to let his kids play with your, drink a beer together and merely use the game as a sort of focal point to drive your conversation. As the age of people who can actually remember good times moves upwards.. the game's popluarity slowly spirals downward. Now days being a baseball fan puts you squarely in the minority.. in fact a distant fourth place behind other more "active" sports. Baseball has, today, developed a reputation as a cheaters game. It started early in the last century with 8 men out (America's first big cheating scandal) and just kept moving forth from there ultimately culminating in some of the game's biggest names coming out on doping charges.. etc. Like boxing and cycling .. baseball became America's dirty secret. We stopped beating the Central Americans in the game years ago. Tiny island nations routinely whip our asses, and football became king of the nation. In fact the second favored sport is such a distant second it is almost in another league.
I coach football and have for years. I continue to coach the game and will watch it over any other sport live or on television. One thing I refuse to watch on TV.. is golf. That might be a great game to play.. but to watch.. I am asleep in minutes after the first tee box.
All that said.. baseball is the first game I will go see in Billings later on the 24th of June. The Billings Mustangs remind me of great memories with family that are now all dead since I last set foot at home. Their memories will be seated next to me.
I was located in Alabama during the days Michael Jordan of Chicago Bulls fame.. tried his hand at baseball. On the day I went to see him.. was his father's birthday (his father had passed away). He hit one of the only balls he ever hit out of the park. Approximately six months later while visiting my parents who were in Chicago at that time, I went to watch him play basketball on his return to the Bulls. I could not help but think .. that the game he left to play, to honor his father.. was a far better one than the game he played that night with the Bulls.
Here is the song that speaks of this to me. Aside from "Take me out to Ball game" in the 7th inning stretch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBdKyHc5EA