America’s pastime

The old ball park. The diamond. Good old fashioned baseball. It’s America’s pastime, you know, unless of course you count Cuba and pretty much every other Western Caribbean island. And Japan. Well, anyway....

The smell of freshly mowed grass, and leather gloves. Even the dirt smells good. The sounds are unlike any other: the crack of the corked bat, the pop of a fastball hitting the catcher’s mitt. There are Cracker Jacks, bags of popcorn and peanuts. If you’re really lucky, a few drunks behind you, sloshing warm beer straight from plastic cups onto the back of your neck. Baseball: there’s nothing like it.

I was a teen during the Steroid Era. That was fun, and I don’t care who you are. Home runs everywhere, guys who, in the course of a single offseason or sometimes just a weekend off, went from size 16 1/2 necks to “that can’t be normal, can it?” Then of course they let women in the locker rooms so you, the viewer, the fan!, got to see inhumanly large people walking around, syringes hanging out of their butts, giving what seemed to be very serious interviews and insights, considering they were naked.

Before then, when I was younger, was Harry Caray. Those summers, both my parents worked, and back then the Cubbies played all of their home games in the daytime. Wrigley didn’t have lights, see. I don’t think I missed a summer Cubs game, thanks WGN, for several years. I loved Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, and who could forget Shawon Dunston. Mercy did that man have a cannon. And there was Harry, bringing it right into your home. You could almost smell the Jack Daniels from your living room. God I loved Harry Caray.

Of course I grew up in Georgia, about an hour from Atlanta and Fulton County stadium. A couple of times a year, my friends’ dad would throw us all in the back of his 1923 Volkswagen Beetle, and several days later we’d roll into the stadium parking lot. We always got the cheapest nosebleed seats, but it didn’t matter, because back then nobody went to the games. Sure, there was Dale Murphy, and Bob Horner’s hair, but when Pascual Pérez was taking the mound, well .... Anyway, by the bottom of the first we’d all be sitting right behind home plate in row, say, 2.

After the games we’d stop, always, at Steak & Shake, which as far as we were concerned was the greatest restaurant in the known universe. Those skinny little fries covered in fake cheese, the greasy, wonderful steak burgers, hell, I even ate the slaw.

Then the Braves got good. Well, good-ish. That this happened during a strike-shortened year may not be coincidence.

Chipper, of course. Has there ever been anyone who looked more like a baseball player than Chipper? No, no there has not. Smoltz and Glavine, and even Steve Avery could throw. Then along came Maddux. If you ever saw him pitch, well, you didn’t see a lot of base hits. What an awesome nerd he was. I loved him to pieces. Fourteen division titles later, the Braves had one World Series title. Wait, ONE? Yep. I did say they were good-ish.

I was there, in the stadium years later when Randy Johnson, who looked exactly like a guy named Randy Johnson, threw his perfect game. Nobody gave a damn that he was pitching for Arizona; he owned the joint that night. To this day I have the front page of the next morning’s Atlanta Journal Constitution framed in my office. And he was “Pitcher Perfect.” Never have twenty-three thousand people had to pee so badly and refused, as one, to go.

For my money these days, though, I’ll take a minor league game every time. They’re cheesy and fun and you can sit close, feel close, hear the sounds and smell the smells. You can watch kids who still love the game; it’s not about a paycheck. Yet. They start on time, so you can be home in time for bed. More often than not they have activities for kids. And you can afford to take the family. Have you seen what it costs a family of four to go to a major league game? A lot, is how much.

I don’t get to watch much baseball these days. It’s true the games take too long, the season is too long, and it’s too corporate. I don’t even get to many minor league games. But baseball, America’s Pastime, will always be in my heart. Heck, I own three gloves. All are major league quality, two of them custom made for me. Do I need them? Heck no. Will I have them forever? Believe it.