I'll Take You Where the Green Grass Grows.

I'm one of those suckers who get excited about baseball every year, right about when winter has become tiresome and depressing, but spring still seems ages away. I know it's a cliche, but that feeling, knowing that spring training is about to start, that's hopefulness. Somehow your heart tells you anything can happen, and this might finally be your team's year, no matter what your head tells you about how bad they were the year before. And my team, the Reds, were really bad last season.

And this year . . . well, guess what -- my head was right. They're bad again. In fact, they're terrible. Yet again. They last won the World Series in 1990, and haven't even had a whiff of the post-season since 1999. Things have been familiarly dismal in 2007. So that early-year hopefulness has long since worn off, and in its place I feel a sort of resignation, about as far from enthusiasm as my feelings can be.

Yet I keep going to the ballpark, like the sucker that I am, because there's just something I love about the game. I went to Tuesday night's game, and watched the New York Mets pound the Reds into submission, but you know what? I still enjoyed it. I love the pace of a baseball game, I love the little bright spots that even the worst teams have. For the Reds, one bright spot has been Brandon Phillips, who not only plays hard, every inning, but willing comes out of the dugout before the game and signs autographs. He smiles and talks to the fans, which doesn't sound like much, but it's a whole lot more than most other players do.

The other part of all this that means a lot to me is that I go to most games with my dad. I guess it's another cliche, right? Fathers and sons, sharing baseball, and all that? Still, it's nice. We went a little over the top a few years ago at Comiskey Park, but generally these outings are a great way for us to spend time together. I don't like missing them.

Baseball is perfect for that kind of thing, ready-made for contemplation and nostalgia. I remember one chilly March day in the late '80s, when I lived in Chicago, I was out walking with my camera when I saw an open equipment door at Wrigley Field. I walked in and found myself on the right field warning track as the Cubs' grounds crew busily manicured the field and painted the seats. Nobody asked me to leave, so I walked around, taking pictures for about thirty minutes. That I found this thrilling, and that I recall it vividly today even without the photos, might strike the non-fan as more than a little odd. Fans get it, though.

"The Cure," by Katharine Harer

baseball is a good antidote for death
where else do we mutter belief scream
hope over green grass bathed
in light where else do we coach the best
out of one another

it's all right baby
you can do it
settle down guy
you'll be okay just hang in there
we need you buddy
we need a spark
be the ignitor man

our whispered pleas combine over rows
of seats and peanut calls and pour into the ears
of our boys fixing them
with our best hope the best we have to give

nowhere else do we do this together
reverently from some untapped placein our chests saved for our children
and our lovers we thought we'd used it up
but listen to us croon making our voices
carry just the right mixture
of love and demand

our throats are sore
the peanut shells under our feet flattened
from jumping up and sinking down again
our heats extended
pumping belief
into this one afternoon

you can do it
you can do it for us
do it now come on
do it now

from Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, 2002.

What I Want to Know, Mr. Football Man . . .

Last week, I went to the Cincinnati Bengals’ final pre-season game. This was a treat, mainly due to the fact that I took my 11-year-old son, who’s a great kid. Because I have so many children – I’ve lost count, really – it’s hard to get one-on-one time with any of them. Plus, we had my company’s seats, in the “club” section, meaning I was waited on, hand-and-foot, as I so richly deserve to be.

The weather was perfect, the seats gave us a great view of the field, and there were surprisingly few drunks in our general vicinity. (Although, by the game’s end, two twenty-something women nearby who’d obviously tipped a few looked as if they were about to get into a little slapping and hair-pulling thing, and I regretted not bringing my video camera, but they worked things out. After three hours of $7 beers, they probably realized they needed to walk back to the ‘burbs together.)

My son is a bright, inquisitive person, and that’s a fine thing, of course, but there’s a downside: it can expose vast gaps in my knowledge of certain subjects. Football is particularly tricky, since I don’t really pay much attention to it. So we have this conversation:

SON: Dad, is a half back the same as a running back?

(At this moment, all 65,000 people in the stands fall
silent.)

ME: Hey, are you hungry? You look hungry. You should eat something.

SON: Maybe later. So, if the game is tied, and it goes into overtime and it’s still tied by the end of overtime, then what?

(Crickets chirping – and by the way, who knew there were
so many crickets in football arenas?)

ME: Aren’t these seats fantastic?

He’d probably figured out some time ago that I don’t, in fact, know everything. Every day as he grows, I guess I know less and less. Pretty soon he’ll be a teenager, and I won’t know anything at all, but I hear once he’s in his twenties, I might know something again – probably just random trivia and nostalgic tidbits about how much better my generation was than these kids today – but something.

For now . . . well, hey, my 6-year-old still believes I can fly.