Love of the Game

it's getting harder to truly love baseball when it doesn't love me back

My life is divided between two seasons; baseball season and not baseball season. Baseball is a harbinger of good things to come. Warm days, long nights, all the delights of spring and summer. The onset of baseball season means my bout with seasonal depression is almost done for the year. It brings with it a sense of hope, a feeling that everything is going to be okay.

I love the game for itself as much as I love it for the things it symbolizes. I’ve been a fan since my mother indoctrinated me as a Yankees fan when I was a small child. For most of my life, everything about baseball was good. It always felt pure to me, something unblemished that brought me great joy. I paid no mind to the business side of things; I was in it for the love of the game. I only wanted to know about home runs and RBIs and strikeouts and double plays and stolen bases. I read about win and losses and ignored all the behind the scenes stuff that made the teams tick.

Now all that pureness I felt as as a kid watching baseball is gone. You can’t ignore the behind the scenes stories because they are front and center. To love baseball, to be a fan of the game, is to be a pawn in a revolting game of chess.

There will be no opening day this month. With the first two series of the season already canceled, the season is tainted already. Who knows how many more games will fall by the wayside, victims of greed and avarice. The one thing that I depend on to buoy me until the real warm weather gets here, until the sunshine is prevalent, is gone. Opening day has been laid to waste.

I want to continue to love baseball. But as a fan, I feel like I’m getting the short shrift. The owners may pay lip service to us fans but we know better. They don’t care about us. They don’t take us into consideration at all. And baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, has not only utter disdain for the fans, but it appears for the game as well. To see him standing there laughing it up while announcing that he just put a stake in our hearts filled me with anger.

I’m tired of caring about a game that often does not return that care, that does not provide the absolute joy it used it. It’s getting harder and harder to be a fervent fan of the game. Some owners have made it clear they have no interest in fielding a competitive team. Recent rule changes are hard to love. The sports pages are filled all season long with stories about money and the business end of baseball.

I just want to enjoy the game the way I always have. I want find my inner peace in the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the soft cadence of the play-by-play. I know it’s a lot to ask for baseball to be a pure and good sport. It is a business, after all. But the fans should not be pulled into the war going on between owners and players. We should not be victims of the arrogance of billionaires.

I love baseball. I love what it means, what it brings to my life. Spring without the sport I love, without the thing that is as much a part of the season as robins and buds on the trees, leaves me feeling bereft and empty. What is April without home run calls and agonizing over early losses? What is spring without baseball on my tv, lulling me into a sense of comfort and peace?

Baseball means the world to me. Not just in the sense of a game being played; it’s bigger than that. It’s important to my state of mind, to my soul. Without baseball, without spring training and opening day, it will feel like winter is neverending. My love for the game will never die, but it sure is taking a hit.

I blame the owners and Manfred for making this mess. But laying blame doesn’t solve anything. I can be angry, I can be aggravated, but mostly I’m wistful and longing for the days when I loved baseball unconditionally, and when it loved me back.