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Jewish World Review July 7, 2005 / 30 Sivan, 5765 I want to be a baseball fan again By Dean P. Johnson http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I would love to be a baseball fan. But no matter how hard I try, I just cannot seem to bring myself to be one. It's not like I haven't tried. I have. I've gone to live games; watched games on TV; followed the standings; bought caps, gloves, bats and balls; I even played little league as a kid — for one season — actually it was T-Ball and I wasn't very good at it, kept hitting the stupid tee and the ball would just dribble off and roll foul. Then again, I wasn't very good at football either, but I did play five seasons of that in junior league. The coaches put me on the line where you didn't really need to be athletic, just clumsy enough to get in the opponent's way. I want to be a fan because baseball has such a rich history, incredible stories of amazing triumphs and spectacular defeats, of individual accomplishments and team camaraderie. Baseball's legacies are the stuff of legends. Take last year's World Series and the curse of the Bambino. Of course I knew that the Bambino was Babe Ruth. When colleagues at work discussed the curse, I quickly realized that it was more than Ruth's foul mouth, and I would smile and nod and side with those who believed the curse would not be broken, not because I was a Yankee fan or had any inkling of what they were talking about, I sided with them because I enjoyed the idea of a longstanding tradition, a direct link to times past. So I tried has hard as I could to watch every minute of every game of that series. I could never, however, make it past the second inning of any game. I really want to be part of an institution that creates classic American heroes like Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig; that has clubs that play in parks; that has its own song written nearly a hundred years ago that everyone knows at least some of the words to. So, if I want to be a baseball fan so fanatically, why can't I? My earliest experience with baseball was television. My dad would sit on the floor leaning on our ottoman in front of our consol 24 inch color TV and watch the Philadelphia Phillies. I would sit with him, but the low hum of the matter-of-fact announcing who's up and who's on deck — with frequent stretches of silence as a batter stepped out of the box for a practice swing or two — would have me quickly up and scrambling for something more interesting to do. Listen sometime to recordings of old radio broadcasts of baseball games. There was a generated excitement in the announcer's speech, and intimacies created between ballplayer and listener like one trusted friend introducing you to someone you know will be your pal. People had to use their imaginations to picture the boys of summer, the ballparks and the action, and imagination has a way of crafting things the way we would like them to be: romantic, majestic, heroic. Although ballparks are getting back to their romantic roots, the damage has already been done. My first live major league baseball game was at Veteran's Stadium, an arena stadium torn down in March, 2004, where I saw Steve Carlton pitch and Mike Schmidt play third base. Unfortunately, I only knew it was Schmitty at third because the announcer told me so. We were sitting in the "nose bleed" section high above center field, creating an even greater distance between me and the sport I've longed to love. Recently I was in St. Louis at a conference. My hotel was across the street from Bush stadium, another arena slated for demolition later this year to be replaced by a more retrofitted park. I had arrived at the conference a day early and had time to mill around. A Cardinals game that had been rained out the night before was being played that afternoon. I considered going, but thought the expense would not be worth the two or three innings I'd most likely make it through. Alone, I took in some sights for a couple of hours. On the way back to my hotel, I walked past the stadium where I found an open gate with a security guard standing to one side. I was going to ask the guard if I could take a peak in, but as I approached, the guard turned around and walked in to check on the game. I followed him in and found an empty seat along the third base line, a couple of rows from the field. It was the sixth inning. The Cards were losing to the Milwaukee Brewers. This was it, I thought, the turning point. From that moment on, I vowed, I would be the fan I always wanted to be. What a thrill. I had just snuck into a major league baseball game. Perhaps this was the primer my fan engine needed. So, I clapped, shouted, sang, stood, and even bought a cap, but by the bottom of the eighth, I was heading back to my hotel. I am slowly accepting the fact that I may never be a baseball fan; however, I'll continue to believe that had my formative years been during a by-gone era of baseball, things would be different. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Dean P. Johnson's columns appear in Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Hartford Courant, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Francisco Examiner, Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, Atlantic City Press, Philadelphia Inquirer among other smaller papers. Comment by clicking here. Archives © 2005, Dean P. Johnson

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