life, death, and professional baseball

2007's Major League Baseball Opening Day draws ever-nearer.

I just received word I have tickets for the July 18th game vs. the Tigers and the September 21st game against the White Sox, both in amazing seats at the Dome. And while I'd rather be drinking sub-standard beer and eating too many hot dogs, sitting on hard bleacher seats and letting the summer sun beat down on my freckled shoulders, I'll take my baseball any way I can get it.

Tickets for the Home Opener in 2 weeks (Really! Just 2 short weeks!), as well as a mid-season battle and tickets for the last home-stand of the season (we close in Boston at the end of September... wish I had unlimited time, energy and money for baseball roadtrips...) have got me thinking about everything I love about baseball.

• Aforementioned junk food: giant all-beef hot dogs smothered in mustard and sauerkraut and relish and ketchup and onions, sub-standard and overpriced (but somehow still delicious) ice-cold beer, sucking the salt off peanut shells til my lips chap, warm kettlecorn in a giant bag you buy as you walk inside the ballpark.
• Wandering around the plaza before the game. Soaking up sun, my city, my neighbors. Listening to street music. Buying overpriced snacks.
• Getting my hands on a program in order to keep score. I used to do stats for our baseball team in high school. I love the art of keeping score, inexplicably.
• The ebb and flow of the game. I love the lull of a long at-bat; the mix of ennui and anticipation, knowing that the next swing of the bat could mean a riveting homerun or a deflating strikeout.
• Trying my very best to out-ump the umpire calling pitches at home plate. I don't know how many times I have screamed: Are you blind? That was obviously low and inside! He doesn't tuck his knees inside his cleats, you incompetent old fart!
• The jumbo-tron. Yup, I'm a geek, but I love peoplewatching (everywhere, not just the baseball game), and the jumbo-tron at the Dome is a kitchy, yet effective, method. I love the strange deformo-thing they do. And the kissing cam. And when they catch a baby sleeping, or a little kid tweaking, or an old lady knitting.
• Speaking of the jumbo-tron, I love the baseball game announcements. You know, the "thanks to Acme corp for having their summer picnic here" thing. And the birthdays, and anniversaries... always so embarrassing (and by embarrassing, I mean hilarious). Oooh, and then there's the classic (insert my best girly-swoon here) baseball-game-proposal. Yah, yah, I know there's the risk of "Ohmigod I'm going to propose on the Jumbotron what if she says no", thing, but that's why I love it. I LOVE IT. I think it's absurd and wonderful, and potentially (at the risk of being accused of using hyperbole), my all-time favorite proposal methodology. (I realize this makes me sound like I've propsed to several people in my life. Which would be both strange and entirely false. Ah well.)
• Dodging crap for 9 innings: foul balls, spilled beer, renegade nachos.
• Singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. There's nothing I don't love about the 7th inning stretch.
• The insta-communities that pop up over the course of a game. Inherently, you strike up a conversation with the people around you - and especially if it's a close or fast-moving game, by the 9th inning you have a new best friend and you are screaming incoherent chants together with your baseball cap turned inside out and backwards. You will in all likelihood never see these people again (unless you all are season ticketholders), but for those few innings, you are a family.

Take me out to the ballgame, baby. I can hardly wait.