It’s What We Hate That Keeps Bringing Us Back
16 years now I have spent playing the greatest game on earth. From the sandlots to the stadiums, from the green grass to the indoor turf, baseball has been a revolving door for all those who come to love all 206 stitches of that great American baseball. To quote Jim Bouton on a total and utter cliché of a phrase, “you spend your life gripping a baseball, in the end, it turns out it was gripping you all along.”
To those who spend those sleepless nights on that bus and hotel room, you know what I’m getting at. As for most kids in Canada, we play because it helps pass the time until hockey rolls around. As a kid growing up, I began playing in Ontario because there seemed to be no sweeter place to spend my weekends than outside basking in the warm summer sun. As the years went on with many new homes across Canada I began to fall in love with a game, that as a Canadian, tries hard not to love you back. The seasons are short, the winters are long, and it’s hard not to “stare out that window and wait for spring.” To some, there is no point in throwing a round ball at a round bat and running in four directional straight lines. To others there is nothing more mythical than digging into a smooth shale batter’s box with the sun beating down on you and pretending to swing like Mickey Mantle. What a joy it is to run around those bases, and Pete Rose a slide into the third that is so ungracefully gritty that no one seems to disapprove. Whether it be on the day of your greatest accomplishment, or a few hours after the cages are locked up and field put to rest with no one in the stands. Because doing it with no one watching somehow feels just as real.
Growing up there was nothing I wanted more than to put on the bright white jersey with the letters “C-A-N-A-D-A” written across it. To put your country name on your chest gives much more pride than the one stenciled in on the back. But how does this strange game that is played every single day for 8 months a year still seem to be fun on a day-to-day basis even though you are glad to leave the park at the end of each day? Only to return to your room to ask yourself, ‘so how do I kill time until tomorrow?’ You see baseball has so much hateful love and depressing respect at the same time. You hate the game for how it treats you sometimes because you feel you have it all figured out. Truth is, no one knows how it will end, and no one really knows how to get it right. It’s just a bunch of people with millions of different ideologies that each individual believes their answer is the key. Thing is, there is no key and that is the beauty of it. No one knows how to get it done and no one knows what the hell they’re doing when they’re doing it right. It just comes...and it goes more often than not.
The game is where the fame is, but the batting practice is where the fun lies. Every ballpark has the same cliché songs playing during batting practice that everyone knows every word to. Everyone wishes they would play something different, yet no one wants to bring a new CD the next day. Most always forget, but most want to just bitch about the same songs playing the next day. We’re a different breed, and we are all one and the same. Most only play to complain about the practices later that evening over a few beers, and trust me…that happens EVERY night. In a way, it is definitely annoying, but mostly it reminds you that you’re still enjoying this beautiful game. Many cannot understand the grind of a baseball season.
Ups and downs come hourly not weekly in this game. Yes, it is a team sport. But when there is one pitcher and one hitter at a time, get a knock or hit the next bus home. Like I said, it is a revolving door of athletes from all across the world: coming, going, making friends, losing friends, enjoying the highs, and drinking the lows away. It’s the only to wake up with a fresh shave and start clean. You see that’s why we’re mostly clean cut, because any bearings of a bad day before need to be washed or shaven away to help us feel like we have a fresh start. In sports, you are only as good as your last at bat. But when those bad at bats start to roll together, it’s hard to take those cleats off at the end of each day and let it go. Most days, I sit in my stall with my pants, jersey, and cleats on hours after the game’s over because in order to have a chance tomorrow, I can’t take the uniform off until I’m ready to release the day that just passed.
In this game we give up friends, family, girlfriends, wives, just in order to get that feeling of running on the field and playing catch with a new guy every day that feels like your childhood friend. We joke, we laugh, we make up dumb handshakes, and we live the shit out of each second because the ride’s too short to not. Some ask how it must be hard to give up so much and never be home and see my friends and family. And it is, believe me. But not being able to strap those batting gloves on and grab a clump of dirt for the rest of my life makes me want to break down in tears. We give it all up, not because we have to, but because it’s too special to throw away. We hate the buses, we hate the hotels, we hate the late nights and the damn repetitive routines we go through every single day. But we love our teammates, we remember watching Rocky IV, Anchorman, Miracle and Bull Durham with everyone on the bus for the 1000th time with our legs stretched out trying to fall asleep from the beginning credits and being wide-awake long after the end credits. In baseball, it’s what we hate that keeps bringing us back. Moreover, it’s that next bus ride we cannot wait to be over, that in the end we wish would never stop.
16 years now I have spent playing the greatest game on earth. From the sandlots to the stadiums, from the green grass to the indoor turf, baseball has been a revolving door for all those who come to love all 206 stitches of that great American baseball. To quote Jim Bouton on a total and utter cliché of a phrase, “you spend your life gripping a baseball, in the end, it turns out it was gripping you all along.”
To those who spend those sleepless nights on that bus and hotel room, you know what I’m getting at. As for most kids in Canada, we play because it helps pass the time until hockey rolls around. As a kid growing up, I began playing in Ontario because there seemed to be no sweeter place to spend my weekends than outside basking in the warm summer sun. As the years went on with many new homes across Canada I began to fall in love with a game, that as a Canadian, tries hard not to love you back. The seasons are short, the winters are long, and it’s hard not to “stare out that window and wait for spring.” To some, there is no point in throwing a round ball at a round bat and running in four directional straight lines. To others there is nothing more mythical than digging into a smooth shale batter’s box with the sun beating down on you and pretending to swing like Mickey Mantle. What a joy it is to run around those bases, and Pete Rose a slide into the third that is so ungracefully gritty that no one seems to disapprove. Whether it be on the day of your greatest accomplishment, or a few hours after the cages are locked up and field put to rest with no one in the stands. Because doing it with no one watching somehow feels just as real.
Growing up there was nothing I wanted more than to put on the bright white jersey with the letters “C-A-N-A-D-A” written across it. To put your country name on your chest gives much more pride than the one stenciled in on the back. But how does this strange game that is played every single day for 8 months a year still seem to be fun on a day-to-day basis even though you are glad to leave the park at the end of each day? Only to return to your room to ask yourself, ‘so how do I kill time until tomorrow?’ You see baseball has so much hateful love and depressing respect at the same time. You hate the game for how it treats you sometimes because you feel you have it all figured out. Truth is, no one knows how it will end, and no one really knows how to get it right. It’s just a bunch of people with millions of different ideologies that each individual believes their answer is the key. Thing is, there is no key and that is the beauty of it. No one knows how to get it done and no one knows what the hell they’re doing when they’re doing it right. It just comes...and it goes more often than not.
The game is where the fame is, but the batting practice is where the fun lies. Every ballpark has the same cliché songs playing during batting practice that everyone knows every word to. Everyone wishes they would play something different, yet no one wants to bring a new CD the next day. Most always forget, but most want to just bitch about the same songs playing the next day. We’re a different breed, and we are all one and the same. Most only play to complain about the practices later that evening over a few beers, and trust me…that happens EVERY night. In a way, it is definitely annoying, but mostly it reminds you that you’re still enjoying this beautiful game. Many cannot understand the grind of a baseball season.
Ups and downs come hourly not weekly in this game. Yes, it is a team sport. But when there is one pitcher and one hitter at a time, get a knock or hit the next bus home. Like I said, it is a revolving door of athletes from all across the world: coming, going, making friends, losing friends, enjoying the highs, and drinking the lows away. It’s the only to wake up with a fresh shave and start clean. You see that’s why we’re mostly clean cut, because any bearings of a bad day before need to be washed or shaven away to help us feel like we have a fresh start. In sports, you are only as good as your last at bat. But when those bad at bats start to roll together, it’s hard to take those cleats off at the end of each day and let it go. Most days, I sit in my stall with my pants, jersey, and cleats on hours after the game’s over because in order to have a chance tomorrow, I can’t take the uniform off until I’m ready to release the day that just passed.
In this game we give up friends, family, girlfriends, wives, just in order to get that feeling of running on the field and playing catch with a new guy every day that feels like your childhood friend. We joke, we laugh, we make up dumb handshakes, and we live the shit out of each second because the ride’s too short to not. Some ask how it must be hard to give up so much and never be home and see my friends and family. And it is, believe me. But not being able to strap those batting gloves on and grab a clump of dirt for the rest of my life makes me want to break down in tears. We give it all up, not because we have to, but because it’s too special to throw away. We hate the buses, we hate the hotels, we hate the late nights and the damn repetitive routines we go through every single day. But we love our teammates, we remember watching Rocky IV, Anchorman, Miracle and Bull Durham with everyone on the bus for the 1000th time with our legs stretched out trying to fall asleep from the beginning credits and being wide-awake long after the end credits. In baseball, it’s what we hate that keeps bringing us back. Moreover, it’s that next bus ride we cannot wait to be over, that in the end we wish would never stop.
