Leading Off Into The Past

I'd like to believe it is the ideal of baseball that draws me to the game: the way that, essentially, what makes baseball so great is the fact that it has stood the test of time as a competition to the point where, even with all the frills it still boils down to, as Ted Williams said, "hitting a round ball with a round bat, squarely." It is always about a pitcher trying to outsmart and outpower a hitter, who, in turn, is trying to drill the ball out of the park or into a gap, unreachable by the nine fielders. Baseball will forever be about warm summer nights, peanuts and cold beers in the bleachers, the crack of a bat when the hitter catches the ball just so, and the pop of a ball around the infield on a double play. Thats it.

When I was nine I entered a contest at the Baseball Hall of Fame, in which kids 12 and under had to write an essay entitled "what baseball means to me." (I won the contest, which gave me lifetime membership to the HoF...go ahead and pat me on the back!) At the time I wrote about the voice of Richie Ashburn on the radio, unsettling every few seconds the exchange of crickets in the fields by my house. I can still hear the sound of "silence" between Ashburn's calls of the plays, the din of an unsettled crowd, and the high pitch washboard sound of the crickets, back and forth. He had a talent for knowing when to let the game call itself, when it was best to just let the emotion of the crowd--a hushed whisper of a cheer, followed by the crack of the ball against the bat, interrupting into a roar--narrate the game for itself. Palpable doesn't even begin to describe how fresh some of those moments are in my memory. In that essay for the Hall of Fame I talked about the smell of neetsfoot oil in my glove (March first never came and went without the traditional oiling of the glove, and for the first week of the month it was stuffed beneath my pillow reaking up my bed with a kerosene-scent. It was fucking spring!) I talked about my dad winding back and shooting pop-flies into the sky so they seemed like they'd find a cloud to land on and never come down, the site of fenway park the first time I entered it (the first stadium I'd ever seen, besides the embarassment where my dad's Phillies played--Veteran's stadium.) I talked about the smell of fresh-cut grass, and the way the dirt on the infield quickly shaded from tan to brown as the grounds-crew sprayed it down one last time before the game. When we were young baseball was a game of senses: sounds, sights, smells, even the taste of burnt shopping-cart pretzels outside of Yankee Stadium. It was the only game one experienced sound by sound, sight by sight, and smell by smell. For a nine year old kid with the attention span of a gnat, it took all of that stimulation to keep my interest through 3+ hours of what some think is a tedious game. But to me every moment was a new stimulation. There's really no other sport in the world with so many possible outcomes at so many points in the game. There's no comparable moment in other competitions, when a team down to its last out, and losing by 3 can have the bases loaded and their best hitter at the plate, and hope without the least bit of delusion that the game isn't over. It happens all the time. I've seen it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears. And depending on which side you are rooting for, the taste is sweet as nectar or more bitter than lemons.

When I re-read that little essay a couple years back (I found it as I helped my parents move) I realized that not a thing I had written then was the least bit phony. The way that I felt about baseball was totally pure, totally righteous, and a completely honest investment in what I thought was the most pure thing a kid could be enamored with at nine years old. Things change as you get older. If you asked me now, "does baseball still mean all of those things?" I could say without lying, "it does." I don't still put an oiled glove under my pillow each March, but I could easily pinpoint the smell of oiled leather in any sporting goods store in the country. Of course, I'd have to admit baseball means other things these days, too: it means gluing myself to a television five to six days a week for 3-4 hours during the summer; it means cursing my lungs out at a manager who can't hear me, tossing my cellphone at the nearest wall 5-10 times a season; agonizing in self-pity every time the Sox lose to the Yankees; searching baseball blogs for Sox coverage at work; leaving dinner cold when the Sox leave 3 men stranded in the eighth inning of a meaningless game against Baltimore in May. Quite simply, it means addiction, and everything that goes with it: constant consumption; mood swings; dedication to my addiction over everything and everyone else; bags under my eyes during West Coast Road Trips; constantly thinking about Sox, when I'm not watching the Sox, reading about the Sox, going to see the Sox. You get the point.

Knowing all of this about me, and knowing when she got into this relationship, my wife would have to deal with my mistress 11 months out of the year (I usually don't follow the Sox in December if my Jets are in the play-off hunt, which is a whole different story) she was apoplectic when she found out MLB was selling the rights of the Extra Innings Package to DirecTV (a satellite source which my condo association will not allow.) She knew full well that this left us with three rational choices: break the condo association rules, and suffer the consequences; move out of the condo we bought in November and find a house where we could have satellite; or move to Boston. Imagine her surprise then when she asked me what in the world I was going to do, and I responded with this, "how about I just don't follow the Red Sox this year."

The thing is, I had weighed all those options very seriously. I had even scoured the Century 21 website to see what a place in Southie goes for these days. But in the end, I decided that, like an addict, I am chasing a ghost. I had to give it up. It's not an easy choice to make, and its not one I want to make. But I had become like a dog who keeps getting kicked by his owner, and yet keeps licking the man's palm. I had to draw a line at some point and walk out the door. For me that point was when MLB made a proactive decision to limit the ability of fans like myself from getting access to the product that we have made our master. I thought really hard about what it is I love about baseball and what about baseball I could do without.

What I love: being at a game; enjoying the summer weather; and the competition and spirit of that essence of baseball I described before; the conversations that are carried on at games, either with strangers or with the person whom you take; winning and its joys, losing and its sorrows; the investment in a team and its players that makes you feel like you are a part of their accomplishments, and a part of their suffering; the distraction of the senses that no other sport can even pretend to provide.

What I could do without: the constant discussion of enormous contracts, salary caps, and whether or not the Red Sox are now on a par with the Evil Empire Yankees (yes, they are); the rage of being so deeply invested in a team that their every loss is a personal agony that seriously effects my mood, my appetite, my sleep habits, and quite possibly my sanity; Sox/Yankees games; Steroids talk; Watching Barry Bonds hit HR 756; the annual Manny Tradewinds rants from WEEI; WEEI, for that matter; Whiny Red Sox fans; Obnoxious Yankees fans.

The thing is, what I love about the game--what makes me go back to it time and time again--is that essential factor, that baseball is always baseball. I could watch a Brewers/Pirates game for four hours and find enough artful enjoyment to match a Sox/Yanks game or a playoff game. What I love about baseball is the baseball. I love the game, and the experience of watching it, enjoying it, both for personal pleasures, and for the shared ones. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the statistical analysis, the "rumors and rants," and the endless breakdown of Baseball Tonight, etc...but I just think its ancilliary to the thing I enjoy most: the heart of the game. And that's something I can still get, something I can enjoy without having to follow the Red Sox like a member of a cult. It's something I can get by following practically any team. But there is no way in hell I am cheating on the Red Sox with another MLB team, least of all the Yankees. And I swore off the Mets when I was a teen (they always win in December, but never in August.) The answer seemed to be out there for me: minor league baseball.

So I have decided I can enjoy the aspects of baseball I love the most, without getting involved in the ugliest aspects of the game. It's a test sure. I don't have any misconceptions that the level of competition will even be comparable. I don't doubt that I will follow the Sox in the boxscores; I'll probably even catch a random televised game, here and there. But for at least one summer, I am going to give my allegiance, my daily baseball attention to one team, and one team only: The Newark Bears. I am going to get season tickets (something I have never had before) and follow thier road games via radio (on the internet of course.) I'm going to set up an aero bed for away games and open my windows a crack, and instead of the din of crickets, I will hear the announcers call the plays over the shouts of voices in the street, and honking horns. But it's going to be baseball again, the kind of baseball that meant enough to me to write that essay back when I was nine.

I intend on getting two season tickets. They play 72 home games, and I am going to catch as many as possible, with as many people as possible. Some games I will attend with my father, or maybe I can even drag my brother to a few. Some I will attend with my wife. Some I will attend with friends, others with an elderly neighbor of mine (though he'd despise that description) who doesn't follow Major League Baseball anymore, as he's become disenchanted with the product. I'm even going to get in touch with the Newark Mayor's office, see if I can get somebody there to take in a game. I'm shooting off an email to Amiri Baraka, as well. The idea is going to be to sort of examine the way that we interact around the game of baseball. See what the Bears, and what baseball in general means to the city of Newark, and to its people, but even in a broader sense, what kind of bonding we do around the game of baseball. Examine closer why the game has become the great American pastime that it is. What better place to do that than in a minor league stadium, among fans who are there for baseball at its most unadulterated.

I'm not sure what will come out of all of this. Ideally it will lead to an interesting blog for friends and family to follow for a summer. I hope it will lead to a few articles as well. But most importantly it is going to lead to a hell of alot of memories, and they are all going to center around the beautiful game of baseball. At the end, I think I'll take a trip up to Cooperstown and use that lifetime pass for the first time in about 10 years. Reintroduce myself to the major leagues the right way: starting in the past.

On Deck: A little bit about the Atlantic League, and some history of The Newark Bears