A confession: I’ve slept-walked through the regular season of Major League Baseball. I’ve heard rumors of happenings, whispers from more ardent fans, including my dad and brother. But I haven’t paid attention. My younger self would be incredulous, if not ashamed. I was a boy who hustled to fetch the morning newspaper as if rounding the bases, sprinted back to home and dumped the headline news to the floor in search of the Holy Grail — the box scores. Each game then scrutinized over my bowl of cereal and standings memorized before I left the table.
Now I have three kids, work, etc. Legit demands on my time. This year, I’ve caught a few innings on the ubiquitous TV in a brewery or restaurant. The larger truth is that my priorities have changed — I spend far more free time in coffeeshops with my nose in a book, more time parenting and in pumpkin patches.
Only now it is October. The air has turned colder and only a few teams have a chance to reach the World Series.
Calling a contest limited to North America as a “world” series is rather arrogant, don’t you think? Even though the sport is no longer America’s national pastime, Major League Baseball is big business and the same is true as Eduardo Galeano, famed Uruguayan journalist and writer, wrote of his beloved fútbol: “When sport became industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots.”
Still, I love this game for the moments when a player rises to the occasion — hits the black at 97 mph for a strikeout, or drives the gap with a line drive, or digs around third base for home. I can’t speak for the athletes, but it is in these moments when I am a kid again, suddenly in the backyard with my younger brother and our dad, the roar of the crowd in my head as we pretended to be our October heroes.
Now, the game is streamed on my phone, and my living room becomes one with the stadium as if the stands were lifted into the air and transported across space. Strike three! We are all on our feet. We are all flying.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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