Play Ball!

Monday is Opening Day and with it comes thousands of baseball fans looking to shake off the chill and usher in the season of sunshine, hot dogs and dreams. Why does baseball make us feel so good? Well there’s the obvious correlation with springtime, the clean slate and optimism that lasts at least until June. But more than that, the first pitch marks the beginning of a time when we start to speak in a folksy parley that, stripped of contemporary reference, could be at anytime in the last 150 years.

More than just a game or day at the ballpark, baseball is an energy. It’s a topic so timeless, so universal, that an 8-year-old and an eighty-year-old can have a thoughtful discussion on the game and both come to it with equal passion and insight. It’s a game that can be played gloriously under stadium lights before thousands of people; or quietly, under a flickering street light that tells kids everywhere that its time to go home.

As much as we revel in the sights and sounds – and smells – of a baseball game, some of the most meaningful moments that baseball inspires happen away from the ballpark: The memories of listening to the game on the radio or playing catch with your dad; the feeling of hitting a ball on the sweet spot or the sting when it hits you on the hands. These things become indelible in our minds because the greatness of the game so heightens our awareness, that they become impossible to forget.

Baseball is child’s game, played by men and watched by people of all ages, influences and origin. Some complain that baseball is too slow but that’s exactly what makes it great. There is enough time between the pitches to talk to one another or to wander up to the concourse without missing too much. It’s a slower pace where tension and drama build between the action and empathy is learned when a batter walks back to the dug-out or a pitcher hands the manager the ball.

But as much as I’d like to live in a lemonade commercial, baseball is of course not all peanuts and soft summer breezes. There is scandal and ugliness and ineptitude that actually makes the baseball-is-life metaphor even stronger. And as we walk through the turnstiles of our lives, counting the runs, hits and errors that we make everyday, we know that there are thousands of others just like us, trying to hit for average, run out a grounder or dust themselves off.

So follow the crowd through the gates this summer, but don’t forget the little leaguers, the game of catch and the notion that baseball, like life, is mostly enjoyed between the pitches by folks who understand that it’s not what happens on the field that’s most important, but what happens between us.

Fred Nahhat is Director, On-Air & Online Fundraising for DPTV