Baseball is back. Or so they tell me. Opening day kicks off today and the long hard march begins to whatever the season will yield.
While I primarily root for the Chicago Cubs I’m a baseball fan and like with most sports I follow, I’m most interested in a good game more than I am rooting for a particular team or matchup. I like to see close contests and races, not runaway division races.
I follow the White Sox as well, because hey, I live in a town with both American and National League clubs. Interleague play between the American and National leagues has taken some of the specialness out of that. And since the White Sox have felt like a minor league team for so long it’s a change in the game that works in my favor.
Chicago papers used to have great baseball writers. Those days are gone. But this column from Paul Sullivan caught my eye as we head into the season. I don’t think it ranks up there with the best of years ago, but Baseball Returns After A Long, Hard Winter, And We’re Grateful To Welcome It Home, does sum up how most Chicagoans feel as we approach opening day in a game that keeps changing, but never changes.
But for much of the next seven months, a three-hour game provides a temporary respite from spiking gas prices, growing airport lines, conflicts abroad and madness at home. Any chance to ignore the real world and immerse ourselves into a fantasy world, even one with nonstop gambling ads, is most welcome.
No, the game is not as good as it used to be. Just ask your parents.
He captures the feelings, the changes, and the feelings about the changes well. When he says radio is still the best medium to enjoy the game, I agree. I listen to the radio broadcast most times I’m watching a game because TV commentators are more carnival barkers than they are baseball announcers.
It also reminds me of my younger years when that was the only way I could catch a game except for the Game of The Week on Saturdays. That always felt like a terrible Catch 22. I’d rather be out playing the game on a Saturday afternoon and would have to give that up to watch a game with my grandfather.
When cable TV game along to our neck of the woods, so too did Chicago’s WGN which brought Cubs games into my world. So I became a long suffering fan long before I moved to the Windy City in an apartment eight blocks from Wrigley Field.
The Cubs were terrible then, and if you waited until after the beginning of the third inning you could saunter into ball park and watch the rest of the game without a ticket. A friend and I did that often.
Of course living in Chicago in later years and watching the Cubs finally win a World Series a decade ago was one of the sports highlights of my life. Those were certainly different days in what seems like a different world.
But a triple is still one of the most exciting plays in sports. The games are back. Let’s hope for some good ones and a few triples along the way.
Play ball!
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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