Perhaps it’s a baseball progression. First, you enjoy the sport on TV. Then you fall in love with the Major Leagues. Then you go to games, get drunk, get hassled by Yankees fans, visit different ballparks and generally raise hell. Then you realize a love for the game. A love so pure you can be enthralled by a T-Ball game.
God bless the Minor Leagues. For the first time in my memory of watching professional baseball I saw a group of players genuinely having fun: laughing, booting balls, missing fungoes. Before the game it was something like watching the Harlem Globetrotters.
There was an impromptu fungo/grounder session going on along the third base line. Apparently, if you missed three tossed balls, you had to let someone else hit. In an effort to get around more quickly I saw three infielders play all sorts of tricks on the striker. They threw from behind one guy. At one point all three jumped in a bunch and tossed the ball out from amidst the bundle. Pure beauty.
Add to this ecstasy a “real” ballgame with balls, strikes, outs, good pitching, good and bad fielding, timely hits and miraculous saves not to mention quarts of beer for $6, tickets for $7 and food for even less. Seldom (nay, never) have I been to a ballgame and spent less than $100. Tonight I spent less than $30 and drank 112 oz of beer, ate half a pound of peanuts and had the finest time at a baseball game that I have ever had.
“I’d buy that for a dollar.”
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