Your first love stays with you forever. Or at least that's what the movies would lead us to believe. Yet, over the years I had become distant from mine. In fact, I had become so jaded by her faults that I had forgotten what had made me fall in love with her in the first place.
But I found Baseball again this past Saturday night in Charlotte, NC.
Don't get me wrong...I still saw her from time to time since we quit going steady back when I was in college, but it was no longer the same for me. I remember literally having tears in my eyes when I watched my old high school teammate Hiawatha "Terrell" Wade pitch for the Braves in the World Series. Such was the emotional pull she had on me.
Lately though, I resented her. There wasn't much to love anymore. Bud Selig and the Union had ruined the game for me. Crazy inflated stats from the steroids era have served to gloss over the accomplishments of the heroes I grew up watching in the 80's. (It's shameful that Andre Dawson isn't in the Hall of Fame) And it's no fun to watch these juiced up guys play. Half of them can't field their position, nobody bunts anymore, and the entire Major Leagues don't combine to steal as many bases as Vince Coleman and Rickey Henderson would in an average season. My recent baseball experiences have revolved around business/social occasions where folks just sat around drinking beer in extremely overpriced seating waiting to watch a rerun of a home run on the new high definition jumbotrons so common in the new ballparks.
But ah Saturday night.
I was bored and looking for something to do with the wife. I got the random thought and suggested we should go to a ballgame. Don't know why. It just popped into my head. I looked them up online and discovered you could get field level box seats for 13 bucks and there would be a fireworks display to boot. So I twisted my wife's arm and she said she'd go (I think it was the promise of fireworks). I called the ticket office and got seats in the second row above the home dugout.
We got to the ballpark and walked to our seats. They were ridiculously close to the diamond. I've been in dugouts that didn't put you as close to the action. It smelled right. It sounded right. There was wonder in little kids eyes. The baseball was crisp. Two clubs filled with guys close enough to the Show that they could taste it and you could tell. Prospects looking to get their first Big League cup of coffee and guys like Wilson Betemit trying to get back. They played the game the way it is supposed to be played. Some of them even ran hard on ground balls...
I had a snow cone. I had crackerjack. I "talked baseball" with the guy keeping score beside me.
And I drew comfort. Comfort that not even Bud Selig, Donald Fehr, Scott Boras, George Steinbrenner, Arod, Bonds, Clemens, etc can extinguish the flame I still carry for my first love.
My old flame was back and my wife didn't seem to mind. It was a sweet reunion indeed.
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