I decided to take a break from my internal marketing postings and get personal … to stop & smell the ballpark.
It’s that glorious time of year — spring & baseball season. Understand I wasn’t always a baseball fan. It came about gradually, spurred over time by my favorite baseball movies: Field of Dreams … Major League … Bull Durham … and now, Fever Pitch.
When my son was younger, we made several trips to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. What a fabulous place! Filled with great baseball memorabilia shops (“we have the baseball cards your mother threw out”) … posters of Abbott & Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine …
Another major contributor to my love of the game came from watching minor league baseball when I lived in Northeast PA — the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons. (I’m hoping my husband & I can get back there this season to catch a game.)
My family roots for the Orioles — my husband’s a Baltimore native, and our son Jason was born in 1983, the last time they won the Series. I’m also a Cubs fan since I spent a lot of time in Chicago over the past 20 years. And with the curse of the Bambino finally broken, hope springs eternal for the same to happen to the curse of the Billy Goat.
It’s the stadium experience that I really enjoy. I rarely watch baseball on TV because you only get to see what’s on camera … but in the stadium, you get to see anything and everything you want to.
To really appreciate how special baseball is to me, you need to understand that I have little patience when it comes to most other sports. Football? I never understood it and still don’t get it. (How many times my father, then my husband, and then my son tired to explain a first down to me!) It’s not just that I fall asleep when football is on TV, I once nodded off in a football stadium DURING a game! Unfortunately, football season will be here before you know it … which is why I gotta get to a baseball game soon.