Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Baseball. It’s America’s pastime. Oh, I know all about the steroid scandals and the records with asterisks next to them and the players making more per at bat than the GNP of medium-sized countries and all THAT. I know that watching baseball on television during the regular season is just a bit more enthralling than waiting in line at the DMV. I know that basketball – even without my beloved Mikey – has cooler stars, and hockey is more manly (and I’ve heard blood bounces on ice and that’s just awesome) and football…well, everyone just looooooooves football despite the fact that, at this point, more players are in prison than on the field. Or should be. (Yeah, I’m calling YOU out, Roethlisberger.)

But despite all that, there is something so magnificently old-school all-American about going out to the ballpark, even with the $95 hot dogs. I mean, really, could Susan Sarandon have spoken so gloriously, so…erotically about any other sport in Bull Durham? Perhaps cricket. Kidding. And that’s why I dragged my brother to see the Colorado Rockies take on the Boston Red Sox at Coors Field. I don’t get to see major league baseball in the flesh all that often, so when I’m in a city and there’s a game on, I try to go.

And there were a lot of reasons to see this game. This series, which began the night before with a Rockies win, was the first time the Rox had met the Sox since the latter had swept the former in the 2007 World Series. Ubaldo Jimenez, one of the best pitchers in the game, would be on the mound, trying to become the first NL hurler in almost 100 years to win 14 of his first 15 starts. (Another reason why I love baseball…fans not only care about obscure factoids like that, they memorize them and wax poetic about them. It’s weird but sorta cute, too.) And, of course, Coors Field, while not surprisingly but still sadly serving only Coors products, has a breathtaking view of the mountains.

So Gun and I settled down in our overpriced seats in the upper deck behind home plate and ate our overpriced but delicious hot dogs and peanuts and sno cones and drank our overpriced and not delicious but at least still cold Coors beers. And we watched the game. Sort of. Because that’s what I also love about baseball. It’s so fabulously slooooooooooooow. Nothing happens in what feels like forever and your attention wanders and you check out the stern-looking, very serious elderly man in the ball cap that reads “Old Guys Rule” and the little kid with the worst curly mullet since the Muscles from Brussels and wonder WHO could do that to their KID and before you know it Ubaldo has given up four runs in the 6th and is getting yanked out like a tick on a hound dog’s ass.

And then you yell and clap and pay attention for awhile and next thing you know you’re watching giant sausage and hot dog mascots race each around the sidelines and singing your heart out during the seventh inning stretch and it’s suddenly the bottom of the ninth and it’s 6 to 5, Sox, and your brother is telling you it’s time to go so you can beat traffic, cause the Rox are gonna lose, for sure. And here’s the thing I love most about baseball: It’s so sloooooooooow, but it can change so fast.

As Gunnar and I were about to head down the escalators and outta the park, we heard a huge roar. “That sounds good, let’s go back in,” I yelled, pulling at him. We did and found that Stewart had homered and the game was tied up. The nearly capacity crowd was going insane and it was only moments before Jason Giambi stepped up to the plate and with that clean, crisp sound that can only signal a ball being drilled into the stands, hit a two-run walk-off homer that beat the Sox and filled the stadium with joy and energy and goodwill. (Well, except for the Boston fans. They were kinda pissed.)

And nights like this…they’re why baseball is still America’s pastime.