Despite the scandals of skipping school, attending a Major League baseball game should be one of the foundations for educating a well-rounded American. In fact, I may be who I am today having been raised on ballpark franks with extra mustard. Then again, this may be the origin of my pernicious propensity to “steal” and wear tight pants. (okay, just kidding.)
As a native of Southern California, we baseball enthusiasts basically had two choices: you were either a fan of the Angels or a fan of the Dodgers. I was raised to be loyal to the former and an overzealous despiser of the latter. Clearly, but unknowingly at the time, I was really just a helpless child who was indoctrinated by my parents to bear false witness and foul prejudices towards any team that opposed the Angels. A lovely pastime I hope to pass along to my progeny.
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But the real truth of the matter is, for better or worse, you don’t choose a team, a team chooses you. It’s assigned by your family’s proximity to the nearest ballpark. The conventional question, when shopping for a home, is to inquire about the school district the prospective home resides in, what puzzles me is that no one ever poses the really important question which is “What professional sports teams will I be required to raise my children to blindly worship should I buy this house?.” Why does no one ever think to ask their realtor that? Kids will eventually grow up and move away. You can leave your school district but no matter where you move to, you will never rid yourself of the ingrained prejudicial fan lurking inside you.
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Perhaps the only thing we Angels have in common with the pious breed of seraph is our patience. The all-capitals-kind-of-PATIENT. The kind that allows one to bear the stinging rebuke of relentless defeat, the kind a fan must summon in order to loyally wait until 2002 to win its first and only World Series. By then I was long gone from that sunny and gloriously warm womb of my childhood. I was a full-fledged Oregonian who could have easily hidden my true identity and changed teams in pursuit of an easy victory. But it was not to be, for the propaganda of my formative years had been so far-reaching that even shock therapy sessions could not have undone my deeply imbedded allegiance. For good or ill, it is my destiny to remain steadfast in my loyalty to the Angels-despite our pansy mascot and statistical carnage.
As with any sport, baseball fans take pleasure in the traditions and rituals that are unique to their game. I had to travel outside the country to understand that being a sports fan is like joining some sort of strange cult. You falsely believe everyone but your group is completely wacko. You never consider that your faction might be a bit peculiar until you witness the bizarre rites of someone else’s.
At a pub somewhere in northern England, I had an up close and personal encounter with an entirely different breed of sports fan, it was an eye-opening experience to be sure. I found myself mingling with a bunch of locals who were glued to the telly for an intense game of cricket (that is if cricket can be intense-I never caught on enough to know). For those of us living “across the pond”, it goes without saying that this is a highly confusing sport. Overcome by curiosity and emboldened with sheer stupidity, I plopped myself down, declared my American naiveté, and pronounced my desire to be educated! The pub-sters were more than happy to oblige my request and commenced launching information faster than I could absorb. Apparently educating a daft American is more intoxicating to a Brit than their lager, as I then spent the better part of a day marinating in a dizzying array of bizarre terminology and perplexing rules. I had officially entered the Twilight Zone.
As I attempted to gain an elementary understanding of this British sport (they like to complicate things with serious formalities), I found myself in the middle of an advanced course for which I had mistakenly not taken any of the pre-requisites (i.e. British Slang for Beginners) . These poor blokes will be disappointed to learn that the return on their investment was paltry, for the only thing I retained about cricket was this: The pitcher is called a bowler, the bat is still called a bat but doesn’t look like one. (It looks more like spanking paddle-minus the holes) and a strike is not what we consider a strike in baseball (I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it is). I struggle to recall that different hits in Cricket can be called a “slog”, a “snick”, and a “skier”-all which make as much sense to me as the terms “Nurdle”, “Grubber”, and “Googly” (these words even confuse my word processor and are currently highlighted in spellchecker red!). I realized this sport would never really make it to “the land of the free, the home of the brave” when I posed this question: “So, if the “bowler” pitches a ball and it accidentally hits the batter, does a fight ensue?” With the distain of a man who just stepped into something foul, the fellow scrunched up his face and replied, “Of course not, this is a gentleman’s sport!”
A gentleman’s sport indeed, and that is exactly what baseball is not, which leads me to conclude that cricket will forever defy an American’s attention span beyond a curious glossy-eyed gaze. But baseball, glorious baseball, now you’ve got something! A true American sport is one where verbally abusing the umpire is art form, scandalous and original insults are encouraged and at a premium. Baseball etiquette encourages fans to distract the pitcher by reminding him of the loose standards of his mother. Top the whole experience off with a few of those tasty ball park hot dogs that, if eaten anywhere else outside the stadium, would easily be discovered for food fraudulence…now you’ve got yourself a real sport!
Inside the AT&T Park, a very focused Connor headed down near the dugout to watch the players warm up. He was dressed head-to-toe in his Giants uniform (yes, this stung a bit) and armed with a brand new ball, just in case. A dugout manager quickly spotted him in all his gleaming orange and black glory and called him over, the man then shouted something at Giants pitcher Tim “The Freak” Lincecum and motioned for him to come over. He handed him Connor’s ball and Lincecum signed it, gave Connor a high-five, and placed the ball back in his hands. In that horrific moment I was seized with terror, my son had officially become a fan of the wrong team!
The rest of the evening was filled with peanuts, hot dogs, high-fives with an occasional drunken stranger, and singing off-key to the organ. There’s something about crooning with 30,000 other shamelessly tone-deaf people that makes you feel like the world is flawless for a moment. At last, the Giants emerged victorious, which I didn’t mind one bit, perhaps due to the fact that they were not playing the Angels-not to mention for safety issues there remained the simple fact that I was covertly entrenched in the bleachers of enemy territory. I simply reminded myself that Giants would always remain the losers of the 2002 World Series against my beloved Angels.
The delirium of his baseball fever was still in full swing a few days later when Connor was called on to pitch during his own game. He had never pitched before in his life but you’d never know it by the way he strutted up to the mound. With the big leagues still fresh in his memory, he took his place on the hill, scratched at the dirt with his cleats, glared at the batter, then deceivingly wound up like he’d done it a million times and pitched the ball! His counterfeit enterprise struck the first two batters out! Lincecum's high-five must have passed on a little magic!
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Wow! I love it. Great story.
ReplyDeleteStacy, you should have a column! That was so much fun!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you would have sat down to watch that game of cricket if you'd realized that one game can take several days! But you gotta love a sport with tea breaks!
Stacy- you are so hilarious!!!!! I can't wait to see you guys Memorial Day!!!!
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