Baseball

I just finished reading Boys of Summer (by Roger Kahn), a perspective written by the man who covered the Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1950s for the Herald Tribune (newspaper) - the team that had Jackie Robinson. He writes about his experiences as well as followup visits with the players 10/20 years later. It kind of gets you into the mood for old school baseball - before the grand commercialism, player agents, and performance enhancers. I guess it's a pretty good read in the spring when baseball is starting up and hopes for the season are high.

I find baseball the most relaxing major league sport to watch (live). There isn't constant action, so you can just sit and watch the game and talk to friends and smell the grass and the fresh air. One good memory was when I was in Scottsdale, AZ during the spring break of '00 (I was 19) and I rollerbladed down to some spring training sites in Tempe and watched a game (White Sox vs. Giants if I remembe correctly - Barry Bonds did not play but Frank Thomas did). I didn't bring shoes to change into, so I got a $5 ticket to the grass berm in the outfield and just sat and watched in my socks.

Now, I don't love baseball. I would say that I like it. I watch the playoffs and maybe a few of the regular season games, but that's about it. 162 games for the major league teams (excluding the playoffs) - too many to care about. I enjoy good controlled pitching and crisp fielding. I like small ball and strategy. Sure, an occassional blast is nice, but so is a suicide squeeze or hitting for the cycle. I played little league for three years. The last year I played, I developed a flip in my wrist that made the bat swipe above the ball and the slump led to my retirement. I've only played softball since. I would rather take a little speed off and hit a well placed ball into short right field than hit a ball that nearly gets out of the park and is caught by the outfielder.

After the NCAA tournament (March), the 3 month long (TIC) NBA finals (really, the western conference final), and Wimbledon, we enter the black hole of sports. Baseball is in mid-season and no one cares, the Tour de France has been overcome by scandal (and even with an American favorite, I'm only mildly interested in the peloton), and football season is a month or two away.