matt

Last night I started watching the mini-series "Baseball" by Ken Burns and it got me feeling rather reminiscent of my love for baseball. I've always loved baseball, especially when I was a kid growing up. On my mom's side of the family, baseball was really a way of life. Most of my family were Mets fans and my uncle Steve was a Red Sox fan and I distinctly remember my grandpa and my uncle bringing me to my first baseball game at Shea Stadium when I was like 8 years old or so. We went there just the three of us and I was so excited because I wanted to see my favorite player, Darryl Strawberry but it turned out he wasn't playing that day (Damn you Jody Reed!) but the real story from that day was the foul ball incident. We were enjoying the game and I'm not sure what we were all doing but Dave Madigan was at bat and he hit a foul ball that hit me on both thighs (clearly my legs were together at the time). I remember it hurt so much and I didn't even get the ball! It bounced off me and a row back. Well, after a lot of crying my grandpa came bought me all sorts of Mets merchandise like a hat and pennant and other stuff. I'm not sure if he was going to buy it for me anyway but it made for a real memorable day.

Besides watching baseball, I loved to play it but I was admittedly quite terrible at it. My biggest issue was I was petrified of being hit by a pitch. I think the fear was exacerbated by the fact that I broke one of my fingers in little league one year when a pitch hit my hand and I was out for the season (the funny thing about that was it hit me while I was swinging so I technically got a foul ball for it and didn't even get to go to first for a hit by pitch). Of course, I also lacked a lot of talent when it came to baseball but whenever I did get on base (usually from a walk), I relished in it. I loved being a base runner and I really felt like I was an expert base stealer (come to think of it, I don't think I was really ever thrown out). I prided my entire game on my base running skills, but it's too bad I never got on base enough to really take advantage.

The best year of my baseball career was my last year of play. In Madison, the last level of little league was called "Seniors" and it allowed you to play through your freshman year of high school. Most kids my age had either played for the high school team or quit for lack of talent/interest so I had an advantage of being one of the oldest players in the league and therefore a real physical advantage over the 7th and 8th graders I competed against. That being said, I still sucked but I got to play third base regularly and despite playing terribly most of the time, I loved every second of it. The sad thing was it would be about 8 years more until I played another organized game of baseball (well, technically it was softball).

I also remember one particular day from my earliest days of playing baseball. I assume this was back in the tee-ball league and I remember I was in the outfield and since no kids in teeball hit the ball to the outfield, I was quickly bored and I remember one inning I spent the whole time playing with a caterpillar that had come my way. I was so engrossed with this bug that the ball could have hit me in the face and I wouldn't have seen it coming. It's weird that I still remember that one inning but I think I felt guilty afterwards for completely not paying attention.

Song of the Day: Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days