TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Thursday, February 05, 2004

What Baseball Means
I had a very strange dream last night. I was walking at night, not really knowing where I was going, although I may have been following a set of railroad tracks. At some point I saw a grandstand, and the next thing I knew I was inside Tiger Stadium.

Even though there hasn't been a game there for years, things looked worn but not old. There were still hot dogs sitting behind concessions counters, cold but not rotten. People were wandering around the stands in silence. Most were older, although there were a few kids. Every now and then people would meet and exchange artifacts. A man gave me a Padres pennant, I handed him a photo of my grandfather's baseball team. Somehow I felt that we were all waiting for something.

The big clock on the scoreboard rolled to gametime, and we all took a seat. An old woman wearing a Tigers jacket walked to a microphone at home plate. She leaned in and recited three numbers - 45, 68, 84. People followed her, reducing lifetimes of fandom into digits. But some of them didn't make sense, what did the Padres do in 1987? Then I realized that this wasn't simply a listing of championship years, it was a recounting of when their passions burned the brightest, when the game meant the most to them.

I think I know why I had this dream. I spent Super Bowl Sunday shooting the Stanford - Cal State Fullerton game. Since then I've been getting e-mail from parents thanking me for the photos of their sons. It's easy these days to concentrate on the big leagues, to be a cynic and pontificate on the battle between the billionaires and millionaires. But at another level baseball is about young men who still have mothers who stick the team photo up on their mantles. Do yourself a favor, throw away the dollar signs. Enjoy the very human side of the game.

A few years back I got an e-mail from a father. I had just put a selection of minor league photos on the website, and his son was one of the featured players. It was the first time in three years that he had seen his son. There had been a huge fight - consider your future vs. I can get paid now - and this poisoned the bond between father and son. The youngster left home for the low minors, rather than for the baseball scholarship the father advocated. The feelings were so intense that neither would reach out, but the father did subscribe to Baseball America so he could follow his son's name in the box scores. A friend happened upon the website, and directed the father to the photos of his child. The father wept when he saw the images of the athletic young man. What touched him the most was that in all the photos his son was smiling. Things were going well for his boy. Sometimes I think I put too much time into this enterprise. Then I get e-mail from parents.

posted by David 10:17 AM