Entries on Special Interests: Baseball

Happy game one of the World Series, everybody.

Back in early July, we went on a trip to Ohio (see above) and spent the first couple days in Cleveland because we were going to see the Guardians play the Yankees with the promise of dollar hot dogs and free Guards shirts.  And we got all that, but the original time got rained out, so we went to the game the next day and watched the Yankees defeat the Guards on a beautiful, sunshiny day on the Cuyahoga.

And so, thinking back on that, I decided that I needed to write about why I like baseball.

I never played baseball or softball beyond what we did in our yard when we were kids, or when we still play wiffleball even though we really don't have the space for it now that my siblings and I can actually hit the ball with some oomph - especially my brother, who has sent many a ball flying into the street, and broken a few, too.  I wanted to when I was a kid - or maybe my dad wanted me to, I don't know, I was five - but they weren't too keen on letting a girl sign up for Little League, so that didn't happen.  My mom wanted me to play softball in high school, and while playing itself sounded fun, the team didn't have a great reputation for having the best people on it, and there were a couple of weird scandals.  So that didn't happen, either, but maybe I shouldn't have let that stop me.  Too late now.  Our dad also took us out in the yard and taught us how to hit and throw properly, and my mom was the one playing wiffleball with us, so I have a lot of great memories of playing with my family and going to games at different ballparks on different vacations and gym teachers telling me I had a good arm.  So far, I've seen the Reds, the Cubs, the Orioles, and now the Guardians in their home ballparks.  

And we saw the Yankees in the same season Aaron Judge beat Roger Maris' homerun record just a few months later.

Is the nation healing??  Well, maybe not.  But there's something poetic about the Yankees being historically good, even if you hate them.  (Which I don't.)  Even if they don't make the World Series.  Okay, so maybe it was just Aaron Judge who was historically good, but still.  Another storied entry in the history of the Yankees.

And there's something about going to a ballgame.  I'll throw a game on from time to time in the background while I'm doing something else - it's hard not to find one on in the summer - and I always put the World Series on.  But baseball gets better when you're actually there.  TV coverage is now so polluted with graphics and in-game interviews with players that it can all feel a bit distracting, like a lot of media these days.  But at the ballpark, you get the full scope of the game, as well as the experience of sitting outside on a summer evening and getting free T-shirts and $1 hot dogs.  LITERALLY take me out to the ballgame because that is the way to do it.

But for as much fun as I've had casually playing and watching, as much as I love going to ballparks and watching a game, I also really love and am interested in how interwoven baseball and America's history are.  I mean the Ken Burns of it all.  Baseball in its current form is old.  I'm no expert on its history, but I've done enough research (and have been around r/baseball enough, oof) that I'm fully convinced that these two things are inseparable, and I'm not alone in that opinion.  There was organized baseball during the Civil War, which ended eleven years before the formation of the National League.  It was one of the things talented, hardworking women stepped up and became professionals in during World War Two with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, connecting it to the period between first and second wave feminism.  Then there are its connections to Civil Rights, its history of segregation and then slow integration with players like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby.  Its history is as complex and interesting and imperfect as America's, and as it is America's pastime, there really is no separating the two.

Again, I'm no baseball history expert, but there's just something about it, man.

And on top of all of that, there is a rich history of baseball fiction - The Natural, Fences (in some respects), Shoeless Joe (the book Field of Dreams is based on), spanning both literature and film from Bull Durham to the baseball fiction anthology I'm slowly (very slowly) making my way through.  There's something about the game that seems to lend itself to narrative, to storytelling.  

And as a writer, I guess I'm not immune to utilizing it.  Back in 2021, I had a story published in Michigan State's Red Cedar Review about a bunch of guys playing baseball in the park.  I don't mention this to brag about it, but I am proud of it, and it goes to show that there's just something about baseball.  It's fun to play, it's fun to catch a game, and it's fun to write about.  Like...a lot of fun.  At least for me.  The characters in the story are ones I write time and again, and baseball always seems to come into the picture when I'm writing about them because it's as much a part of them as it is, somehow, inexplicably, a part of me.  At least in some small way.

Guess that technically makes me a part of the legion of baseball fiction writers.

So, yeah.  Baseball girlies are the best girlies.  And if you want to read the story, find it here, and be sure to read the rest of the works in the issue, too.