Baseball

Baseball is considered the great American pastime. Why is it so fascinating? I played baseball up until this past summer. I loved it. It consumed my life. I traveled overseas to play; I was scouted; I devoted my life to the sport. Why? Why is baseball so consuming, so fascinating? In my family, the love of baseball runs through your veins along with your blood. Our lives revolved around baseball. I have four brothers, and all of us played baseball at least until high school, and three of us played baseball in high school. When I was growing up, our summers were consumed with baseball. Family vacations could only happen during the weeks between summer and fall ball. Our schedules were driven by baseball. If something interfered with baseball, then it was thrown to the wayside because baseball was the dominant force in our lives. When my wife and I first started dating, she asked me while I loved baseball so much. I told her about how much I played, practiced, and watched baseball. Being the analytical woman that she is, she wanted to know why I started loving baseball. That was a harder question to answer. My father had always loved baseball, and I grew up loving the sport with him. I remember watching Yankees games on our couch when I was just beginning to throw the ball. I remember him teaching me to throw a knuckle ball and later, a curve ball. He taught me to bunt, pitch, and throw. We would spend hours on end in the backyard throwing the ball and hitting in our batting cage. I would devote all day to practicing while he was at work, and when he came home, I would show him how I had improved on something we had worked on the night before. We would play catch until dinner was ready, and then, we would go back out and play some more after dessert. When my brothers were big enough, I would drag them out with us so we could play a wiffle ball game in the backyard. My mom used to have a quote calendar on her desk, and she cut out one quote that she hung on our refrigerator because it reminded her of our family. It said, “Baseball is a game where little boys practice being men, and men practice being little boys, and they both get really good at it.” She used to joke that the quote was written about my brothers, me, and my father. We used to roll our eyes when she teased us about spending too much time on baseball, but she never really seemed to mind our addiction. It wasn’t until I had my own son that I realized why baseball is so addictive and why my mom never cared that we devoted so much time to it. It was never about the game itself. It was always about our family joining in on the sport together. We spent almost every hour of every night together working on a game which in essence joined us together in something that went far beyond a sport. It joined us as a family, bonded us for life. Maybe that’s why baseball is the great American sport- it helps create the great American family.