Micro Fan's Notes on the Morning of Game Three

I was not much of a fan of baseball when I was growing up, I simply had no real experience with the game, nor did anyone in my family, it seemed. My grandfather would have to be considered the only real sport fan in the immediate family. The Rockies departed on a road trip and became the much better New Jersey Devils, while The Rockies had yet to be born. The Nordiques had still to leave the confines of Canada and hand Denver a championship title. So, to my young mind, baseball was what my grandfather put on in order to take a nap.
I found out much later that my mom's sides of the family were very much into America's pastime and the World Series was always a big deal. She would help the women clean the entire house and cook a big spread for each game regardless of who was playing. I went through a brief period of buying baseball cards; however, this was a painful attempt to fit in better with what I saw other children doing. My love of hockey, coupled with a football family, further cast me into the ostracized category. I also went through a brief period where I really thought the Montreal Expos were great. This based on having never seem them play but thinking the logo looked cool, exotic, and somehow European-as if one could go to Montreal and shed off this pointedly blank suburban existence. There was a general interest from myself when the Rockies came to Colorado simply because everyone was generating a buzz about it, and it was on anywhere you went that first season.
When I met my wife and her family I was thrust not only into a deeply religious baseball family, but also to a town whose reputation was notorious in its zealous aggression towards sports. I still remember going by the old Spectrum for the first time and feeling the pulling gravity of the Broad Street Bullies. I venture to guess that non hockey fans, if they have an image of hockey, draw it from the Orange and Black or maybe the Hanson Brothers from Slapshot. I digress into hockey. My new extended family had years invested in the Phillies and a house full of paraphernalia and outer wear to go with it. These things attracted me and my visual senses. I loved walking around the house of my mother-in-law and inspecting the bobble heads, pennants, buttons, tickets, photos and on and on. I t was a micro museum of baseball and one could not help but want to be drawn in. The family took my wife's younger brothers on a long road trip of triple AAA teams which struck me as such an American apple pie surreal vacation, it touched a deep nerve in me almost as if my family were truly bizarre for not doing such a thing. Through them, over the course of games and seasons, I gradually opened up to the appeal of baseball enjoying it in a beginners sort of way and taking the majority of game time to look at people and ape stories about them while in general having a good time.
The very last year we were in Philadelphia I went to a game with my brothers and Grandfather Jack along with one of his sons. It was game that would decide whether the Phils would enter the post season, the tickets having been bought months before on a whim by Jackson aka brother #1. Granddaddy Jack was a huge baseball fan and his giddiness over being at this game, in real time under an explosive and clear Philly sky with the family men, was enough to make anyone feel intoxicated by the game and the ballpark. I also received my first rally towel, a highly coveted piece of baseball memorabilia, for anyone to take home from a huge game. We were there and the park was electric with anticipation, it clicked with me in a philosophical way, this love of baseball in America. The guy who I spent the season referring to as the “asshole dad in American Beauty”, aka Jamie Moyer, walked up to the mound. Our seats were in the second tier right behind home plate. He tossed the ball in his hands a few times and exploded a volley of pitches that eventually won the game. You could see on his face that he knew it might be his last game and he might not ever have the chance to step on a mound again unless he showed the world that he still held some magic in that elbow. He delivered. From his first breath to the last pitch he threw I became a fan, a real fan of baseball and the Phills. It stands today as one of my favorite memories in adulthood and something special that I shared with people who have become integral to my life. And I believed. They went on that year to be swept ironically by Colorado Rockies. People went back to being skeptical and waited for the new season.
Here we are on the morning of Game Three of the World Series. We are 1700 miles from the action and the family that believes, but bonded by radio airwaves and fandom, poised with the anticipated rush of let’s get this done and win…quickly. The statistics and the season are of no consequence; it all hinges on a play-by-play desperation. It draws out the best of America in a time when the country is fractured between what will happen in two weeks with the swearing in of a new president. Baseball offers a welcome diversion from the loop of news which has not changed since May. It reminds us of the endurance of America and its dreams. A country is truly only known by the passion of its pastimes-through war, depression, upswing economy and downturns-baseball endures as does America. I, for one, am glad to grab a surreal piece of the pie while getting ready to Clap… Clap …Clap…Clap…Clap.