So today is Opening Day.
Well, not really. Baseball began its season last week with a two-game series between the Dodgers and Cubs in Tokyo, but you get the idea.
There are plenty of pieces out there about the day, everywhere from the umpteenth predictions to the “Does Baseball S*ck?” However, I’m not going to do a George Will-type poseur piece like “Why The Pitch Clock Violates Natural Law” or “How Federalist 68 Predicted the Free Agent Era.” Just some memories about baseball, family, and home.
Family?
Baseball is no longer “America’s Game.” It has long since been replaced by the NFL, but it is the game of summer. While the NFL is a weekend party, baseball is about rhythm.
We started to take the kids to Sunday Diamondback games at an early age, 2 and 5. We would sit in the upper deck with enough room for the kids to roam when they got the wiggles. I would be darned but they always made it through entire whole game, and they were savvy enough to know that their version of the “Seventh Inning Stretch” (the sixth inning snack bar run) was the cue to start the cheers. The funny thing was when they got older and claimed they couldn’t remember what I asked them to do five minutes ago, their memories of those games many years later were crystal clear.
Other family memories?
Long car rides with the radio on. We never allowed tablets or phones for the kids; it was audiobooks and the radio… or Punch Buggy. Especially the radio when a game was on. Baseball is a game made for the radio. It didn’t matter who was playing: the Diamondbacks, some minor league team like the Isotopes, or even (heaven forbid) the Dodgers. Just a lot of miles, with the four of us listening to a game we picked up half-way through and probably wouldn’t get to the end of.
One time, when the kids were smaller and they had been quiet for a while, I figured they had fallen sleep, when all of the sudden the older kid (he was 7) would ask why Gonzalez keeps swinging at a 3-1 breaking ball.
Home?
For six weeks, Arizona and Florida are the twin poles of the baseball universe as Spring Training comes to town. The pitchers and catchers report a few days after the Super Bowl, and then it ends just as the NCAA tournament gears up.
Back in the early 1990s we almost lost what we call the Cactus League. We were down to seven teams when Cleveland left to move to Florida, and if it wasn’t for the Rockies starting up the next year in Tucson, who knows. Now we’re up to 15 teams and they are all in the Phoenix area.
I used to have an office around the corner from the Angels complex in Tempe. Some mornings, I would go out there while I made my calls and watch them practice on the back fields. It was peaceful but with a rhythm so loud you could hear it hum in the air.
You would see a coach, somebody you remembered from when he played, and you would search your memory for something he did or somebody you knew; more often than not you struck up a conversation with him or a passing beat reporter.
Networking skills are key.
My father would come out to catch a a few games every year, and once in Scottsdale we saw, no more than 20 feet away, Willie Mays playing catch with some young kid. Thirty years later and my father still talks about that moment.
I’m no longer a baseball fan. Seeing on of the three true outcomes a third of the time doesn’t interest me, along with the encroachment of “it’s a business,” and the juvenile antics of the players. But there was a time when Opening Day meant spring was here, no matter what was happening outside. Pitchers and catchers reporting meant another Minnesota winter was on the run, it was just a little more time. For about 25 years, it was the soundtrack of summer, courtesy of John Gordon of WCCO, the best homer there ever was, getting excited at the crack of the bat, making me focus on the radio.
I picked the wrong player to fall in love with. Greg Maddux. He was wrong because I never got to see him that much, even though I watched most of his games on TBS. It’s because his time on the mound was never that long. So many times, he would throw eight or nine pitches and that was it, three outs, usually on weak grounders. There was a 2-0 game against the Brewers that lasted less than two hours. And the last time I saw him, he was with the Dodgers. He had some trouble with the Giants in the first inning, but he struck out Barry Bonds and then faced the minimum for the next seven innings. The Dodgers won when his catcher hit a solo homer in the tenth. I promised myself I’d never watch him pitch again. I wanted that game to be the last time I saw him. Utterly masterful. Completely in control against a great team. Untouchable.
That’s a memory to keep.
I abandoned the north side team when they let Maddux walk. Being a White Sox fan was great for 25 years, but Reinsdorf s age has made him a joke, or is it more of an embarrassment?
I haven’t been to a baseball game in decades. The first baseball game I went to was the 1961 All Star game at Fenway Park– a tie. When I was in high school, I had a gym class student teacher who had pitched for both the Yankees and Red Sox. Never asked for his autograph. I wonder if he ever earned his living as a teacher.
A childhood friend’s pet peeve, as listed in the high school yearbook, was “watching the Red Sox lose.” After Ted retired and before the Impossible Dream of 1967, things were bleak for Sox fans. I wish I had seen Ted play. Interesting fellow. I was glad that the Red Sox finally beat the “curse” in 2004, but nowadays, I don’t follow baseball.