JANE LEE
Sports Editor
“Baseball is like church. Many attend, but few understand.”
I couldn’t agree more with former major leaguer Wes Westrum on this one. Millions of people show up to cheer on the Rally Monkey at Angel Stadium or eat Dodger Dogs and Cracker Jacks at Dodger Stadium every year, but how many of those people really understand?
And by understand, I’m not talking about knowing what a slugging percentage is or what being a member of the 40-40 club means.
It’s not about the knowledge of the game; it’s all about the emotions. Believe me, there are plenty when you are a hardcore fan of a team that plays six months out of the year (eight if you include spring training and nine if your team makes the playoffs).
Any true fan of America’s favorite pastime will tell you that watching or attending a baseball game is like taking a three-hour trip to another universe — a universe where the grass is greener, the sounds more vibrant, the emotions more powerful, the surroundings more peaceful and the people more content.
Life continuously throws curveballs and changeups at us every day, but with baseball you can put those off-speed days behind you for at least three hours.
Complicated realities don’t have to exist from the time the first pitch is thrown to the very last out. Life and the world we’re living in may change, but the game of baseball will always remain constant.
The baseball season consists of 162 games — that’s 1,458 innings, 8,748 outs and approximately 486 hours worth of emotions.
And when the postseason rolls around right about now and your team’s still in the mix? Well, that emotional rollercoaster that is the regular season just speeds up, causing you to hold your breath for long periods of time, sometimes making you feel like you could be the victim of a mini heart attack with one swing of the bat.
As for me, I know it’s playoff time when, out of excitement for the first day of games, I wake up an hour before the daily alarm sound of the Goo Goo Dolls goes off from my phone. Trust me, the snooze button is one of my best friends, so that does not happen very often.
And unlike sleeping, eating is something I do best, but I know it’s playoff time when my appetite is non-existent until the last out is made by my Oakland A’s in their Game 1 victory over the Minnesota Twins.
I know it’s playoff time when I’m imagining all that could happen to my A’s rather than paying attention to the subjunctive verb lesson while sitting in Spanish for 50 minutes without any access to a TV or computer to keep up with the score.
I know it’s playoff time when I’m frantically running from Spanish to history class to turn on my laptop to check out what I’ve missed.
I know it’s playoff time when figuring out why my Internet won’t work becomes a bigger problem than trying to write down every single note about Jeffersonian Democracy.
I know it’s playoff time when I receive an instant message during class from a friend who’s also keeping up with the A’s-Twins game, asking if I think Huston Street will hold Oakland’s 3-1 lead in the ninth inning and telling me he’s ditching class today to drive to San Diego to see Game 2 of the Padres-Cardinals series.
I know it’s playoff time when my friend has every right to skip class because, despite what some professors may think, attending a postseason game is just as good an excuse as any sickness.
I know it’s playoff time when I’m forced to decide whether to go to Convo at 10 a.m. or be in my room watching the first pitch between the A’s and Twins for Game 2 at 10 a.m.
I know it’s playoff time when the decision isn’t even up for debate — I’ll have plenty other opportunities to get that Convo credit.
And, I can say with a big grin on my face that I know it’s playoff time when the two teams I love to boo, the Angels and Giants, are nowhere to be found in any postseason games.
When their players are not golfing, I’m sure they are having just as much fun watching the playoffs as I am.
Go A’s.
10-05-2006