Respect Authority

Impossible as this might sound to some, I do not like baseball. In fact, I think it was made for assholes and losers and boring people.

…Okay, that was maybe a little overly critical. The fact is, I’m not much of a fan of organized sports at all, but I think that’s probably just me projecting my feelings because I have always been terrible at them. Perhaps I shouldn’t be resentful of baseball, or dodge ball, or even badminton, any of the grade school gym class tortures so many of America’s future software programmers were forced to suffer through as unfortunately scrawny children, their intelligence somehow branded on them like a golden Star of David. And yet, knowing that their oppressors will eventually end their brilliant athletic careers at the ripe age of 18, from there on making the glorious transition to bloated, alcoholic failure, is somehow not reparation enough.

Either way, perhaps the blame does not belong on sports themselves, nor on the eight year old trolls grinding my face into the dirt of my grade school’s sparse football field so long ago, but rather, on my parents, those so-called future software programmers of America, who had the gall to be nerds and still actually have sexual relations, releasing me into a world in which my genes would haunt me for the first two decades of my life.

However, my distaste for baseball goes beyond those particular fond childhood memories. There was a time in my youth when I regularly attended minor minor league baseball games, presumably because it was an alternative to bowling alleys and Discovery Zone as birthday party destinations. However, it was a short lived time, a love affair not unlike that of Chris Brown and Rihanna — intense, fast-paced, and ending in ghastly violence. One fated night under the lights of a pivotal match up between The New Britain Rock Cats and The New Haven Ravens, I watched in horror as a line drive home run was caught some two rows behind me by a middle-aged woman. With her mouth.

The crowd screamed as the ball erupted from between her gasping lips, an afterbirth of destruction — teeth, blood, a lifetime of disturbing flashbacks — following closely behind. My father said frankly as her family scurried to sort her teeth up from in between spilled pop corn on the sticky metal floor of the grand stand, “That’s why you’ve got to pay attention.”

My eyes, growing itchy and bloodshot from insufficient blinking, were glued to the ball in play for the rest of the game, and small fingernail marks had been etched into the bleachers on either side of me by the end of the devastating evening. We walked to the car afterwards, the merchandise stands and teeming crowds a complete blur. Indeed, paying attention would not be necessary anymore; I would never attend a baseball game again.

Nonetheless, I find myself stupefied today as I have discovered something in baseball worth liking again:

I apologize for taking so long to deliver the goods with this one, but there’s nothing like having something to look forward to. Besides, with the same sadistic pleasure you’ll no doubt experience while soaking in every staggering detail of the incredible moment in time captured above, I take in forcing you to read through my overwrought confessions. Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy.