You win some and you lose some. It’s the lesson we learn playing sports as kids, whether it’s soccer, tennis, baseball or jumping horses. For some of us, that competitive spirit develops early and stays with us. For others, it’s nonexistent or we learn to temper our wins and losses as more balanced humans.
As baseball fans around the country celebrate MLB Opening Day today, I found myself reflecting on baseball and everything that goes with it from hot dogs and beer to games and players. There’s an analogy coming, so wait for it…
I went to Spring Training in Tempe, Ariz. for the first time this March. The trip wasn’t specifically for baseball, but rather adjacent to some other news happening in town — the opening of a new boutique hotel, The Graduate. (Hotel review coming soon…) While I loved the hotel, its funky cool vibe and its delicious restaurants, the simple truth behind my reason for wanting to visit Tempe this time was indeed baseball. I wanted to experience the all-American tradition, and see it first hand — “why are people so obsessed with baseball?” was my angle.
* PS — if ever in Tempe, Chef Brian Archibald heads up The Graduate’s The Normal Diner and Tapacubo, a high end street food concept where he makes some of the best tacos I’ve ever had, delicious cocktails, and the best churros ever (literally, I wanted to bathe in the salted caramel dipping sauce and use the cinnamon sugar topping as a scrub). More on that in a future post.
As we approached Tempe Diablo Stadium, I started to feel the energy. A pedicab sped past with excited fans, amped up and ready. The music the driver was blaring was ironically Rappin’ 4-Tay, “Playaz Club” — go ahead, go listen to it. More champagne Mr. 4-Tay? Takes you right back to 1994.
Everywhere you looked were fans donning red Angels caps and jerseys. Mixed in were some Colorado Rockies fans in purple. Chicago Cubs fans were all over town. These were not normal fans. These were mega fans — the kind who know how much each signature is worth; the kind who know where in the draft each player was picked; the kind who can roll off season stats from 17 years ago and be right. They knew the players’ life histories. And they kept score – on paper – with a pencil.
I asked one woman, probably in her 60’s, why she and her husband were both keeping score when the scoreboard had it all there, and she could easily check the internet post game.
“It’s our tradition. It’s like a scrapbook,” she said. “We’ve been doing this since our first date.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“1975.”
Mind boggling. I come from a family that doesn’t even keep our own school reports or yearbooks and these people have been keeping Spring Training scorecards since 1975?! There was something in that tradition that I found particularly magical.
Which brings me to Boston.
I lived there for four years, originally for grad school and then stayed. It was apparent in my first week that if you didn’t immediately become a Red Sox fan, you wouldn’t have many friends. Tradition is everything in Boston. So at risk of being friendless, my Dodgers cap made its way to the back of the closet, and I went shopping on Lansdowne Street. At Fenway Park. On Game Day.
Anyone who’s been to a Red Sox game knows that this was a wild mistake. Are these people human? I immediately understood why “fan” came from “FANATIC.” These people were borderline insane. I’d never seen anything like it.
I bought a shirt and cap and head straight to the nearest bar, The Cask N’ Flagon, to meet a new friend and watch the game. I hadn’t been in Boston long at that point – I was still calling the T “the subway” – but by the end of that night, I felt home. New friends. New city. New team.
That was 2003. By 2004, I was a legitimate fan. I could name the players. I could talk shop at the water cooler. The season was off to a great start. The Sox were on a streak. The Pru (Prudential Center) was lit up “GO SOX” for every game. The bars were packed. Work meetings were literally cancelled as the Sox got deeper into playoffs. Something was happening; you could feel it.
Long story short… they broke the Curse of the Bambino that year. They won the World Series for the first time since 1918. It was a moment that will forever be cemented in my mind. Strangers in the street were hugging, kissing, high fiving, crying, laughing, screaming, and silenced to speechlessness, all at once. I felt honored to be there to witness such a historic moment for Bostonians, some of whom had been waiting an entire lifetime to be the champions.
The streets of Boston were flooded with emotion. Complete and utter elation was palpable from everyone, myself included. Over baseball. What?!
Even in my own athletic victories, I couldn’t remember ever feeling that overcome with joy. And this wasn’t even my own accomplishment, nor my hometown. It took some time to figure out what this was all about, and it really wasn’t until long after I’d left Boston and was at another baseball game that I realized – it was the fans. That sense of connectedness and community doesn’t happen often these days, sadly. And for them, it was the realization of a lifelong dream.Boston fans are in their own league — being a Sox fan was a way of life. Now, I have to say, it wasn’t always good – I saw disgusting fights in and around Fenway, and some of the fanatics took their passion too far, especially when the Yankees came to town or they had one too many beers. But anyway…
That was then.
In Tempe, I found another kind of mega fan. Though I put on my red Angels cap to support my home team, I didn’t really care who won or lost the game. I was happy to be there, have a Blue Moon and a hot dog (Dodger dogs are better, sorry Angels), buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, enjoy the sunshine and the good old-fashioned Americana of a baseball game.
It didn’t hurt that the players are easy on the eyes, and we had seats four rows behind the dugout, just to the left of home plate. Ladies, next time your guy wants to take you to a game, say yes — the view was tremendous.
I thought about going to Dodgers games as a kid and had fond memories of the seventh inning stretch. It donned on me that I had been a baseball fan for a long time. Not like the scorecard keeping couple, but in my own way. I tried to remember different times in my life, like Boston, where games were a big part of my life. There were more hockey games than I could ever attempt to remember. Basketball games. Football games. Fun games. Sad games. Heartwarming wins. Heartbreaking losses. Literally and figuratively.
I thought about how often we use analogies from sports to make sense of a situation or for encouragement or plain old “female empowerment”… like, for example, how many times have we ladies used this one:
or this one:
So here it is, the big analogy on my mind today as the next MLB season opens — the reason to “play ball” (Read: Take a chance. Book the ticket. Take the trip. Open your heart. Face your fear. Say yes.) As writers — or actually, as HUMANS — we face rejection, disappointment, hurt and failure all the time. We receive an unfair call, we get cheated, we strike out. Fortunately, we also celebrate victories, achievements, kindness, and love, too. Every once in awhile, we hit a home run. That’s the human condition. The yin and yang of living.
It’s not all going to be good all the time. Winning isn’t everything. Purity has a way of being tarnished. People have a way of disappointing. But then you find the light at the most unexpected time. An umpire who gives you a fair call. A good luck streak. A curse that’s broken. Bottom line — you’re going to succeed and fail, you may suffer some injuries along the way, but if you take yourself out of the game, it’s over. So in celebration of Opening Day, let’s all just play ball!