Take Me Out to the Ball Game.....

…But don’t expect me to pay attention to the game. There is nothing like seeing a ball game right at the park, but for me it is one of the worst places to actually watch a game. There are just too many distractions. I am too busy waiting for the beach ball to come my way, or trying to time the wave perfectly as it rolls across the crowd, or searching for famous people with my binoculars. Last summer I managed to get tickets to a Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway. It was that great game where Jacoby stole home off of an unsuspecting Andy Pettitte. I know because I watched it the next day on-line. Unfortunately, at that precise moment during the game I was using my binoculars to check out JD Drew’s ass while he was up to bat (not too shabby!), and it took me some time to realize what all the shocked elation was about. At home I would have at least gotten the instant replay (from multiple angles!). Don’t get me wrong-- I enjoy the excitement of being at the park. The intimacy of seeing the game in the flesh, in insta-time without the delay of having to send the images and sounds through all those strings and tin cans--- It’s just that it is hard to pay attention when you are a few beers in and your friend Jenny also with a few beers and a few whiskey shots under her belt is fervently trying to initiate the wave and encouraging the brood of eight to ten year olds in front of you to chant “Yankees Suck” repeatedly. I was in Saint Louis during the 2000 season and got cheap tickets to a game, which was easy because it isn't Boston. Mark McGwire was playing and I think he might have hit a homerun and I think maybe the Cardinals won, but I can’t tell you who they were playing. I can tell you that I enjoyed a foot long hot dog and I acquired a cool floppy khaki hat with the Cardinals symbol on it just for filling out a credit card application. I have been like this since the first game I ever went to. I must have been 9 or 10 when my dad and I first boarded a Greyhound in Portland, ME to head to Boston to watch my first game. This one I think I remember slightly better than most, maybe because it was my first game or maybe because it is so far removed from now that the reality I created for it has become the truth. But I think Boston beat Milwaukie 2-1 (wait does Boston even ever play Milwaukie?). The problem when I was 9 was that I couldn’t see even if I really wanted to. Every interesting thing that happened would cause the crowd to rise to their feet leaving my sub 4-foot frame seeing nothing but the backs of overweight men. There was also a rare heat wave in the northeast during that time. I think my dad told me it was 104 degrees out. Therefore, my most vivid memory of that game is me standing in front of a sink in a green-walled Fenway bathroom repeatedly filling the newly acquired sox cap my dad bought me with cool water from the faucet and dumping it on my head. It was refreshing.

So take me out to the ball game, I will likely forgoe the crackerjacks, but you can buy me a beer and fries. I will root, root, root for the—“hey do you see those wackos over there? What does that say on their chests? 'B-O-T-O-X'?! Hand me the binoculars”.