Day 74

Fresh Start_74: Baseball, I thank you

It is impossible to not be romantic about baseball. It has been a little over 24 hours since the Cubs broke the curse and I haven’t stopped thinking about baseball. Even watching some of the Thursday night game last night, I was still thinking about the game I love. Yesterday was an incredible day to be a baseball fan. To see all of the joy and happiness from Cub fans, it was infectious. As you all know I am a Yankee fan, and I wore my Yankee gear yesterday and I was proud to be a diehard fan, and proud of my team, even without the championship.

I didn’t sleep much after the Cubs won on Wednesday night, the game ended at about 12:30 AM EST, and after the commissioner’s trophy presentation and the popping of the corks it was about 1:30-2 o’clock in the morning. I spent the next couple of hours scouring Twitter looking at the hundreds of Cub fans celebrate on video as the final out is recorded. I watched each one with a smile on face and a sense of joy, being lucky enough to share this moment with them, even though I have never met them. While I was watching all these short videos, I was also writing yesterday’s Fresh Start. Then I stumbled upon a video that reminded me of myself. It was a Nike commercial with a young Cub fan playing a game of baseball in head, just like I used to do. Reliving all of those memories in head of being in the back yard on a Saturday morning, pretending I was Jeter, Marino, Bernie, Robby Cano, and many more.

Honestly I am so thankful that I am able to love this game as much as I do. I happy that even though I wasn’t home, my dad and I could text about the moves that were made in the game like we were the ones calling the shots in the dugout. I am thankful he introduced me to the game and I could share moments with him. I am also extremely lucky to see the Yankees win a championship in 2009. I remember exactly where I was when the final out was recorded in the box. My dad and I were in his office watching the game. I went to bed in the sixth inning or so, and he woke me up in the top of the ninth. Both of us hanging on every pitch, and when the final out was recording, trying to be as excited as possible as we could without waking up the entire house. I said in 2009, when I went to my first game at the new stadium, that the only way this would feel like the old stadium, is if they win a championship. I didn’t know that it would be that year, and I guess you could say I called it.

My dad and I since the new stadium opened have been a part of some great moments at the stadium. The highlight of those has to be when Derek Jeter came back from injury in 2013 and hit a bomb on the first pitch he saw into the right field bleachers. My dad has a recording on his old blackberry of us going insane. Unfortunately, he didn’t know his phone was recording, and the phone was in his pocket, following a picture he took of Jeter stepping into the box. My dad and I also have ridiculed Yankees radio announcer John Sterling for the years of bad calls, while we listen on the radio, and try to catch every postgame where he goes over the ridiculous home run calls. So to my dad I thank you so much for giving me the ability to share those moments with you, and the many more we will watch together.

And to think all of those feeling danced in my head at 4 in the morning after watching that Nike commercial. But, baseball can do that to you. Baseball can make you feel on top of the world one second, and the very next rip your heart out, and make you feel depressed for a few days. Just ask some Indians fans who were going insane when Rajai Davis hit the tying homer in the eighth, then giving up the lead in the top of the tenth. The same can be said about Cub fans seeing Chapman blow the game in the eighth and seeing Zobrist give them the lead with the double in the tenth. Baseball fans are in a special club of their own, with nonbaseball fans wondering why we are so passionate. The game is intoxicating and something you can’t write in Hollywood scripts. The game in today’s world is too slow for the younger generations and not interesting, but yet if they would just put their phones down for an inning they would see what a work of art the game truly is. I am upset that baseball is done for the year, and like the feeling I get when the Yankees season ends, I get the same feeling when the World Series ends. I feel bad knowing that baseball won’t be relevant until the winter meetings, then until late February when pitchers and catchers report. And like I said yesterday, I am so happy for my grandmother, who finally saw her Cubs win a World Series.

This season was special for her. She got to watch those Cubbies a lot on TV because they were so good, ESPN and the MLB Network would show their games multiple times a week. She got to follow her team, and see the players and connect with this team, instead of just following the box scores the next day in the paper. And I’m sure that was the same feeling was nationwide for Cub fans, being a part of that team. Having those story lines shake out the playoff picture was incredible to watch, and as a baseball fan I appreciate being a part of it. As Scott Van Pelt put it on Sportscenter, “what a spectacular event the World Series was from start to finish. We won’t see anything like it again, which is okay, because we knew that going in, and we didn’t want to miss it.”

Sources:(espn.com)

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