We learn baseball at a young age and when we watch it, it’s a timeless fountain of youth. It’s fitting that the season starts in the spring, the youth of the new year.
Why We Love Baseball Chats
Talkin’ baseball is often nearly as much fun as playing or viewing it! I like talking with fellow baseball fans by a fireplace and about moves our favorite teams were making (or not making). We reflect on the past season and look ahead to spring training, when hope is renewed? Maybe you throw on another log and debate approving or disliking new major league rule changes. Perhaps you prefer reminiscing about players and teams in their past glories. You might compare them to the stars and clubs of today. I welcome you to discuss and debate the current events, history, and controversies in baseball . This blog will usually focus on Major League Baseball, but all levels from Little League to MLB are welcome subjects here.
My Early Baseball Background
As a small child I had a wiffle bat and ball that got little use. I was more into action figure toys than any sports. One day my paternal grandmother babysat me. It was Opening Day for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. She was fan who remembered when the Red Sox had won their last world championship in 1918. Her father had made her an astute fan of the game by taking her to Red Sox games. Suddenly I was interested in this game that consisted of throwing, hitting, and catching this little white ball. I also liked that the game included running and then possibly sliding through dirt into a base. That gave me and other little boys across America an excuse to get our shirts and pants messy. I asked my grandmother about the rules, the players, and the particular plays that had occurred during the game.
https://es.pinterest.com/pin/502151427173631732/
I now had my first sports hero became Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski (Yaz). He held his bat up in the air as if he was trying to touch the sky. I emulated his swing when I started playing Little League Baseball a few years later. That afternoon with grandma transformed me from being indifferent about a game I knew nothing about to an obsessed little fan who watched or listened to every Red Sox game on TV or radio. I was hanging on my bedroom wall newspaper bobblehead cartoons of Red Sox players. I read and reread baseball history books. Memorizing players batting averages, home run and RBI numbers, and their particular batting stances was a daily ritual. Thus, I was ready for the next step of baseball fandom.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W26apQMHjVQ
My father had the good sense to know that Fenway Park was now mecca to me. Later that summer of ’69, around the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, he surprised me by taking me on a sunny day to Fenway, America’s most beloved ball park (“pahk” as said in Boston). I walked up the ramp of the right field bleachers with his arm on my shoulder. My eyes were wide with disbelief of I was taking in. The grass was bright emerald green. The stadium light fixtures which, while not on for the afternoon game, still made the place look massive. The best landmark was the Wall and the nets above it in left field. Red Sox players wearing in their classic white uniforms, red numbers, and blue hats with the iconic letter B on them completed the view.
When you’re a young boy, the players are gods. Seeing them in person after spending hours of seeing them play on tv, was surreal turned up to 11. To this day, home plate at Fenway Park feels to me like the Hub of New England. All of the region’s favorite sport is decided there from balls, strikes, to runs scored. Home plate reflects what is the essence of baseball. As George Carlin once expressed, you get to go home!
Baseball Cards and Clock Corrections
I spent my allowance on baseball cards a few summers later and felt like a shrewd GM when just by pure luck I managed to get a rare star player’s card in the stack of often mediocre players used as filler to keep kids buying cards in search of the big All-Star, especially for me a Red Sox star like Yaz. By my parents’ fireplace I fended off winter chill and stayed warm reading baseball season preview magazines during the offseason, curious to know “expert” projections for my Red Sox and all other MLB teams.
I played organized ball until I graduated high school. As a leftie swinging from the heels trying to channel Ted Williams homering in his last career at bat. Alas, I fell short and had to settle for a stand up double. I’ve not played even an informal pick up game of baseball since then, though I have played softball a few times. I went through a phase of nearly walking out on baseball games or shutting them off on television because the pace of the game had become slower than a traditional chess match.
Thankfully, in the 2020’s MLB figured out that what was left of its fanbase wanted to actually watch the game being played instead of enduring the sight hitters taking a road trip from the batters box, meditating, pondering, playing with their velcro, checking each part of their uniform from head to toe, inspecting the dirt around them more often than a gardener, and talking to or signaling their coaches before. Pitchers were not helping by slowly climbing the mound after each pitch as though it was Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon, so a pitch clock was introduced to reduce such nonsense and get the action going every 20 seconds, and the grind slow game was now the grand old game again.
Baseball Talk Is Fun–Let’s Keep It That Way!
Despite my favorite team being the Red Sox, this site is really about our collective love of the game. I will have posts about the Red Sox from time to time, but it’s not a Red Sox blog. I’m also not writing from a mindset that because this is my blog that my ideas are infallible and reign supreme. I appreciate feedback and ideas so that I can not just write about but learn from fellow fans facts and perspectives I never considered before. Let’s all enjoy conversing about one of the nation’s greatest pastimes!