When I was six years old, I thought big league baseball was Little League for grown men - a game plumbers, lawyers and firemen played after work for fun. I was too young to understand about agents and contracts, but I understood fun. Fun is going to a ball game.
When the game begins I sit down. When it's over, I stand up. With the exception of jumps for joy and the seventh inning stretch, I don't leave my seat. I have a deep-seated fear of missing an important play because I'm fourteenth in line in the ladies room or doing a balancing act with snacks at the refreshment stand.
Yes, I sit through the boredom of pitchers' duels. There's nothing slower than a slow baseball game, but I sit. I remind myself it's one of the few times that time doesn't pass too quickly.
I pass the time people watching. Fans who wear their hearts on their sleeves wear team shirts on their backs. Conservative fans integrate the team's colors in their outfits and tasteless fans wear something with the visiting team's insignia on it. I wear dark colors. Spilled beer doesn't show as much on dark colors.
Many people complain baseball is boring, but there's more to the game than they realize. At first I didn't understand most of the rules and knew nothing about strategies. Now I have my own strategy - no souvenirs until after the game. The lines are shorter; my sons have been successfully bribed to behave; and I don't get a banner or a giant, plastic bat in my face.
We root, root, root for the home team - to the point of laryngitis; but we never boo the umpire. My husband and I don't want to encourage our sons to boo the decisions we make.
However, the decision to give freebies to the first twenty thousand fans who come through the gates is wrong. It's the last twenty thousand who leave that deserve the gifts.
We don't leave until after the last out. If our team is winning, you can never have too much of a good thing. If we're losing, you can never pray too much for a good thing.
Avoiding the traffic jam in the parking lot is always a good thing. The only time we got out of the parking lot easily was when everyone else left while we were still looking for our car.
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