Why Baseball Means So Much To Us: Is it the Setting?

I know I said I wouldn't write until next week, but I was trolling around Sons of Sam Horn (what? the season hasn't started yet!) when I came across this discussion thread, which I think really touches on some of the issues that I want to look at closest with this project, specifically, the question that spurred the discussion "Why does baseball mean so much to us?" (By "us," the author means New Englanders, but I am applying it to baseball fans in general...typical Sox fan, thinks we are the only people who love our team this way.) A few things pop out at me from this discussion: Bart Giamatti is quoted in one of the first responses, and first of all, it is a dead-on quote:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops

Secondly, it reminds me that I need to read Bart Giamatti a little more. What I am doing here isn't exactly unique. I think it's uncommon for our time, and the minor league stuff is a new twist, but I think fans and writers, even ones who used to be commissioner, have been struggling with what, exactly, is the undefinable thing that makes baseball so important to us. One of the things I think that Giamitti fails to touch upon in this quote, although I can't say for certain he doesn't elsewhere, is the quickness with which the good feelings of baseball can be fleeting from us. Yes, there is a sadness when the season ends (and it does end when we need it most) and there is a joy one the rare occassion that the season ends with a play-off win. But that joy is vacant the next spring when all we have is the immediate forseeable future to hold onto. The win is never enough to satisfy. How else do we explain Yankees fans?



If this discussion doesn't make you salivate for the first pitch of your team's spring training I am not sure what will. I particularly suggest reading the second page items about our obsession with the pastoral. I have always felt, and I hope have reiterated in my first post that one of the biggest parts of baseball is the atmosphere of the stadium, the act of sitting and looking out onto the beautiful field, drenched in rays of sun (sorry, Jake) and passively taking in the game and its setting. Baseball should be inseperable from that ideal surrounding. I believe this is one reason that the level of competition may not effect so much the wonder of the experience I will have taking in this season, even if the Passaic does float by with more than the occassional litter. I think the discussion is worth checking out, especially in the context of understanding the significance of baseball as a sport, regardless of the team. Can one get this satisfaction at Riverfront stadium as easily as, say, Miller Park? Honestly, I couldn't tell you the final scores of the last 2 or 3 games I attended at Fenway, but I could describe for you at the snap of a finger the exact view of Fenway park I had for each game.