My game!
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My game!
Image by gwilmore
This photograph and its accompanying essay might present a bit of a surprise to anyone who has known me only during the past dozen years or so, but for much of my life I have been an avid baseball fan. Everyone who is even casually acquainted with me knows I am a voracious reader, but relatively few are also aware that during my lifetime I have read more books about baseball than any other subject except history and biography. It is a game that appeals in a unique way to intellectual types, and my favorite columnist is George F. Will, in part because he writes in such a thoughtful and engaging style and is such a devoted baseball enthusiast himself. Some of the best writing I have ever come across is about the grand old game, and on occasion I have even tried my hand at baseball writing, as in this semi-serious essay about why I believe Dante would have been a baseball fan if he had lived in our day, or if the game had existed back in his time.
However, I have paid very little attention to baseball in recent years. There are several reasons for this. The steroid scandals have unquestionably tarnished its image even more than the ridiculous salaries of major-league players, which by themselves have caused more than enough harm to baseball since the advent of free agency. I am basically conservative by nature and baseball is a game of enduring traditions, so I have never liked the extra round of playoffs or the wild card, both of which abominations have been imposed during the regime of Commissioner Bud Selig, whom I regard as one of the lower forms of life, ranking perhaps slightly above the earthworm on the evolutionary scale.
But the main reason for my lack of interest and enthusiasm has almost certainly been my depression. Since 1997 I have missed several seasons entirely, without having watched a single game, either during the regular season or the World Series. My wife, no baseball fan herself, has expressed concern to me about this on more than one occasion, and I never had an answer for her as to why it was so.
But in spite of all this, I have always known that my enthusiasm for the game still lurked somewhere below the surface, needing only the right time and circumstances to erupt once again in all its former glory. So many of my happier memories are associated with this game. When our son Colin was born in 1989, I immediately set to work to instill in him a love for baseball, and the very first thing I ever read to him was a Sports Illustrated article about Orel Hershiser, the Dodger pitcher who won the National League’s Cy Young Award the previous year. Colin was all of 2-1/2 weeks old at the time. (Incidentally, I succeeded in this effort, at least when Colin was young; he LOVED baseball back then, and when he was about two years old, he could identify dozens of players when shown their photos. His main heroes during that period were Ted Williams and Big Bird.) Later, when we lived in Ohio, I often took him to games at various professional levels, in both the major and the minor leagues. (At one game with the Columbus Clippers, the Yankees AAA affiliate, I told him to keep his eye on an up-and-coming shortstop named Derek Jeter.) During the glory years of the Cleveland Indians in the mid-90s — Orel Hershiser was pitching for them by this time — I stayed in my office late one night, listening to one of their playoff games on the radio while keeping score on a yellow legal pad. (Sheila called me a couple of times that evening to check on me, and I gave her updates each time.) And I vividly remember the night I picked up a Chicago Cubs game on WLS radio and listened through the static and the occasional fadeouts as Frank Castillo barely missed throwing a no-hitter, surrendering nothing more than a triple to Bernard Gilkey of the Cardinals in the top of the ninth inning. I have had many other moments like these, all of which contributed immesurably to my life in a way matched perhaps only by my more recent interest in ballroom dancing.
"Bull Durham" is considered one of the classic baseball movies of all time, but I have never cared much for it, although one of my favorite movie scenes does appear at its very beginning. The Susan Sarandon character is seen walking somewhere purposefully as she muses that no religion has ever satisfied her spiritual longings, with the exception of the Church of Baseball. In the voice-over, she recites this monologue just as she enters a beautiful ballpark to watch a game.
Sometimes I get that same feeling, and today I acted on it by attending my first game in nearly seven years. The Arizona Diamondbacks were playing host to the San Diego Padres, and I bought a ticket a few days earlier when it was offered through an employee discount at work. It may have been the best .00 I have spent in a very long time. I took my camera with me — this being the first time I have ever tried to photograph a baseball game — and came home with 184 images, all of which turned out surprisingly well since I was not using a true telephoto lens. (I used my 85mm f/1.8 prime.) Afterward, I went home as happy as I have been in some time, and here I am now, uploading the first of the images to Flickr and writing this. Truth be told, I think I would rather have been dancing somewhere; but except for that, going to that game today was probably the best thing I could have done on this Memorial Day, which hereafter may rank among the important dates in my life. After a long period of inactivity, I am once again a member in good standing of the Church of Baseball. Now I want to try to attend a couple of its services every month for the rest of the season, although I won’t always be taking my camera with me. I used to keep score and listen to the play-by-play on a portable radio whenever I went to a baseball game or followed one on radio or television, and as much as I enjoyed taking pictures today, I missed being able to do those other things.
This particular game, by the way, will not rank among the great and memorable ones, as it was rather clumsily played and the D’backs ended up losing it despite a 7-1 lead going into the eighth inning. (The final score was 9-7, with the Padres tying it in the ninth and winning with two more runs in the tenth.) And this photo is a little less dramatic than it appears, as the batter, Diamondbacks outfielder Gerardo Parra, merely fouled to right.
For anyone who is interested, the box score of this game may be seen here.
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