When it comes to sports, some may consider America’s Pastime dying.  However, in my life, baseball has been slowly reviving itself over the last several years.  My baseball career ended in the 6th grade after a season on the Red Sox in AAA “Majors”.  During that last year of baseball, I essentially played outfield for only a couple of innings a game, batted 8th or 9th, and probably had a sub .200 avg (that’s just a guess).  I hadn’t grown much at that point while pretty much everyone around me was bigger and stronger.  So I was a small kid trying to hit against pitchers who were pitching up to 50mph (and probably higher).  After that experience, I pretty much quit baseball altogether.  I still liked watching it on occasion.  I still remember the Atlanta Braves dominating for a few years in the 90s when they had that trio of pitchers – Smoltz, Maddux, and Glavine.  But aside from that, I moved on from baseball.

Fast forward about 10 years to 2005.  My friend Chuck asks me if I want to play in a fantasy baseball league with him and some other friends.  I reluctantly said yes.  I had no idea who the top players in baseball were at the time with the exception of maybe A Rod or some other well known star.  Little did I know that was the beginning of baseball’s revival in my life.  I fell in love with baseball again.  Albeit, I loved it for the stats,  but I still loved it.  I didn’t even have an MLB team to root for (one of the few downsides to living in Austin).  But over the next several years I relearned the sport, kept track of players, looked at box scores, and went to some games.  Two years in a row I managed to make it to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.  Somehow, this sport that had left a bitter taste in my mouth became one of the more enjoyable sports for me to keep up with.  Maybe enough time had passed for me to let go of the game, or maybe I had come to grips with the fact that I was just bad at the sport when I always thought of myself as a good athlete.  It doesn’t matter really.  What matters is that I appreciate a sport that has a huge connection to the history of our nation.  It’s remarkable how much history is linked to this sport, all of which I have just scratch the surace.

Fast forward again to around 2009.  My office decides to have a softball league in town.  My free time was scarce due to my involvement with ultimate, but I eventually was able to commit to a full season after I decided to quit Ultimate competitively.  Then a year later some friends formed their own softball team.  Softball is basically little league for adults.  You’ll find anywhere from ex-college baseball players to people like me who hadn’t swung a bat in over 10 years.  It’s great.  It takes you back to those Saturdays at the ball park playing AA little league where there is nothing but fun and joy as you play the game of baseball.

Just yesterday I was watching some random music video and in it there was a girl carrying a baseball bat while walking around the countryside with two of her friends.  I immediately thought of the movie “The Sandlot” and all the memories I had as a kid playing baseball.  There is something comforting about it all.  My favorite memory from when I was younger was playing home run derby at my friend’s house.  It was just three of us, but we spent the better part of the morning trying to hit the baseballs as hard as we could.  Later that day I had a little league game at Bishop Field (AAA American on the Mets).  My typical hitting career in AAA was get walked 90% of the time.  I had a small strike zone and it was the first year for kids to start pitching.  That day we were the visiting team and I was the lead-off hitter.  Despite having a full season of taking the first pitch, my muscle memory from that morning took over and I swung.  I think the ball hit the center field fence.  I watched the ball more than actually running the bases because I only made it to first base.  If only I could have played home run derby every day before games.