A funny thing happened on my way to middle age: baseball has become a bigger presence in my life than I expected. Count me among the faithful in Red Sox Nation, but as I look at it, there are other, more interesting reaons why baseball has become an important part of my life.
It started, I think, with having the space to play the game. We're fortunate to have a good-sized backyard with more than an acre of open grass. Come the spring, it's a great place for everyone to play. The surrounding woods mark the boundary for home runs, and the big oak tree near the swing set is a perfect place for home plate. We don't have a dugout (yet), so the swing set serves as the place to hang out until it's your turn to bat.
I also play catch and throw almost every night of the year, at least until the snow is so deep I can't find the ball. After dinner, I go outside with my big dog, Bear, for 20-30 minutes. He needs his daily exercise and, as time has unfolded, I need my baseball. We start with some long throws. Bear gets to most of them before they reach the woods. Some nights we play on the street. The asphalt blunts the nails on his paws and he likes the change in location. And, in winter, the road is plowed so we can play when the snow flies.
After the long throws, it's time to pitch. I keep a very simple pitchback in the yard, and throw against it for at least 15 minutes every night. If I miss the pitchback because of a wild throw, Bear gets the ball. He's incredibly good at finding it in the woods. I can think of only a handful of times he's come back without the ball in his mouth. If I miss the ball rebounding from the pitchback, it's also Bear's ball to get. Back and forth we go.
Eventually, Bear gets tired. He will get a ball, walk around me for a while, and then lie down, chomping on the grass and breathing heavily. He won't give up the ball easily, which means his belly needs a rub and he needs to catch his breath. Then it's back for more.
This nightly fetch and pitch has, not surprisingly, improved my throwing arm. It's more accurate and more fun. And it's a hoot, frankly, to try and throw using a clump of ice and snow as your pitching rubber, and while wearing your winter jacket and boots.
There's also the joy of baseball with my kids. Liking skiing, it's a sport which the entire family can play. When we started, the bases were close together, there weren't too many hits, and the kids enjoyed running around the bases more than anything else. Now it's different. They throw well. They catch and run. They hit the ball in the woods routinely. Our bases have gotten further apart and I'm starting to wonder when our first broken window will occur from an errant hit.
The game also underscores important but basic athletic mechanics -- eye-hand coordination, agility, speed, and balance. And it's fun. You can make up a thousand different ways to play. I usually bat left-handed when I play with my kids. All of these combinations and fundamentals combine for a rich environment for playing together. Every summer, when we head to Maine for two weeks of vacation, our baseball games change into world-championship wiffle ball, played in swimsuits and bare feet on a sandy little beach. The pitches get crazy. Balls are caught in the water.
For all of its simplicity, baseball also offers complexity, both as a game and as a sport. The simple joy of throwing a ball under the stars in New Hampshire with his dog is balanced by the complexity of a sport played around the nation by a variety of professional and amateur teams. I watch the Red Sox play nearly every night and try to catch the Dartmouth baseball team when they're at home, too. I didn't grow up playing the game very much, so I'm trying to understand the game as an outsider rather than a player. Where is the infield positioned? What's the next pitch going to be? How well is the batter battling the pitcher? How deep is the talent on the team?
The tactics and unending statistics of baseball are like a nebulae to a relative newcomer like myself -- a distant complexity that twinkles and shines with mystery and intrigue. Add to that condition the history of the game itself, and you get another layer that beckons. Learn more. Read this. Baseball can be a swirling mass into which you could become lost as you struggle to understand it.
Or it's just a game with a ball, a bat, and a glove. This duality of simplicity and complexity in baseball also appeals to me, and especially so as an adult. I find so much of adult life, particularly as a parent, involves find a good balance between complexity and simplicity. Work, parenting, marriage, even other sports I play: each seems to benefit from a good balance of sophistication and simplicity. For instance, as we raise our children, Elizabeth and I talk a lot about their intellectual and personal needs. We analyze how their doing in school, how their behaving, what they saying and thinking and writing, and what their interests are. We ask these and a thousand other questions like them because we're trying to do the best job possible as parents. And yet, at the same time, sometimes being a good parent is a simple as giving your a kiss on the cheek. Or providing a nice, yummy meal. Or playing catch with a baseball in the backyard.
Baseball grows in my life, too, because of the Red Sox. Growing up in Washington, DC meant that football (Redskins) and basketball (all of the great high school teams, Georgetown, Maryland, and for a while at least, the old Washington Bullets) were the dominant sports to play and follow. I first moved to New England in the Fall of 1986, and was invited that October to watch the sixth game of the World Series with some new friends. When the ball dribbled past Bill Buckner in the sixth game, a sound came from this group like nothing I had heard before or since. It was a kind of ancient groan, tapping into generations of frustration. And I was hooked. Any team that generated this level of passion deserved my attention.
I could write almost endlessly about the Red Sox -- indeed, some writers do only that -- but at this point in my life, one of the standout joys about following the team come from the community. "Red Sox Nation" is the term used by the media people in Boston to describe the phenomena, but there really is something to it. I almost always wore my Red Sox baseball hat while knocking on 1,500 doors in my campaign for Grafton County Commissioner. The hat kept my nearly bald head from getting burned or too cold as November approached. But it also served as a greating to other fans, not just of the Red Sox but also of baseball itself.
The game of baseball, I've begun to realize, brings people together. Like soccer, the game has a way of reaching across so many of things which divide us from one another, like nationality, income, or education. Baseball welcomes everyone. On the campaign trail, whether they liked me or my politics, people were always happy to talk about baseball.
We will see where this involvement with baseball goes. It's been a blast so far. And if the Red Sox keep winning as they have this season (28-12, winners in 70% of their games), it's bound to get even better.
