When I was a kid I was a voracious sports fan. All sports. Yup. Football, basketball, and baseball. That was pretty much all sports as far as I was concerned. On the fringe I was aware there was hockey and wrestling, but that was about it. Where (or maybe when) I grew up, there was no soccer. No lacrosse. No volleyball. Nothing else of any interest whatsoever sports-wise. Oh, you had golf and tennis, but the individual sports didn't move me much. I played them, but I didn't follow them.
And so I was also a trivia buff when it came "all" sports, but most adroitly where football was concerned. When my dad and his friends would have a disagreement over who the starting quarterbacks were in Super Bowl III, for instance, it was me they would consult. There was a time in the early seventies that I could name, among other things, each NFL team's coach, starting quarterback, and back-up quarterback.
By the time I was in my late teens, however, I was not so keen on sports. There were other things I was more interested in and it just seemed like "sports" had played themselves out on me. So I pretty much stopped paying too much attention to them. I did have my dalliances with the Broncos and then college football—specifically the CU Buffs. In fact, at one point over the course of ten or so years, among the twenty or so people I enjoyed these games with, I had the longest string of CU home games not missed. Yeah, it was a big deal back then, but not so much nowadays.
And then sometime circa 1999 my wife and I watched the Ken Burns' documentary Baseball. It was magical. It was beautiful. It changed me. In the same way that the Beatles or Miles Davis changed music. Or J.D. Salinger changed literature. Or meeting my future wife changed me. The kids these days might say it rocked my world. Actually, kids these days probably don't say things like that anymore, but you get my gist.
Ever since I saw Baseball, It's just been brewing in me—aging like a good beer. It became clear to me that there was no reason not to start following sports again. But this time I defined "sports" as baseball. Just baseball. I became monogamous to one sport.
So it is now that I, even during this off-season, am a rabid taker-in of all things baseball. Trades. Rumors. Rumors of trades. Rumors of rumors. Who's playing in the Mexican winter leagues. Which teams are vying for the Dominican (or Liga de Beisbol Dominicano) Championship. (That would be Toros del Este and Gigantes del Cibao.) There is simply no reason to temporarily stop following baseball once the World Series ends.
To paraphrase the late sports writer Red Smith, I am of the opinion that baseball is only boring to boring people. Baseball is a game of finesse, of strategy, of repetition. 162 games make a season. No other sport even comes close to playing that many games in a season. Basketball and hockey both play 82. That's half. If my calculations are correct, the Colorado Rockies will have 19 days off in 2011 from opening day to the last game of the regular season. And that includes three-in-a-row over the All-Star break. You try and work six months in a row with 16 days off plus a three-day vacation. And that's if you did NOT excel at what you do. If you make it to the All-Star Game, you don't get that three-day vacation. Oh, and if your team is lucky enough to make it all the way to the World Series, your off-season, or extended vacation, just got shortened by a month. And not only that, but I didn't even count the about 45 days of Spring Training. If you win the World Series, you've been playing baseball for over eight months straight.
And they've been playing baseball in pretty much the same way, with very few changes (although don't EVEN get me started on the travesty of the designated hitter rule), for over 150 years. The pitcher has always thrown the ball to the batter—or striker, as he was known—from 60' 6". The bases have always been 90' apart. There have always been three outs to a half-inning. Three strikes make an out; four balls make a walk. Always. Ty Cobb. Honus Wagner. Babe Ruth. Willie Mays. Hank Aaron. Barry Bonds. Troy Tulowitzki. They all played by the same rules on the field, with only minute variations over the years.
I could go on. And I probably will. Just not now. I'm basically just setting up what will follow, in terms of my love of baseball. Stay tuned.
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