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Jul. 30th, 2007 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI have boogle set as my home page at work. The quote of the moment that I saw there just after lunch was something to the effect of "If you try to find time, you never will; you have to make time." The timing was astoundingly appropriate; I'd been worried about not having any time during the week to work on the house with before the Dells this weekend what with everything else going on. I was worried about going to the baseball game tonight. It was the last game of the season for our local team, the Kenosha Kings, and I saw on the marquee outside the field on the way home a few days ago that admission was free, so I'd asked my dad if he wanted to go with me.
The game started at seven-thirty, so around six I called to see if he was still up to going. He wasn't feeling well and thought he might not be up to it. Since Andrea was sore and tired too, I thought maybe I'd just stay home and clean. I'd decided I was going to make the time to do something unusual with my dad, but if he and Andrea weren't up to going out, maybe it wasn't meant to be. Instead, I'd go over and set up the wireless network at their place.
So I called at seven to see how he felt. He wasn't up to going out, but I didn't have a car to get over there with and wasn't up to hauling my laptop and gear over there without one. We almost called the whole thing off; then my dad changed his mind and decided to come out to the park after all. I'm so glad he did!
We met at the entrance just as the national anthem was being sung and we found seats in the bleachers behind third base. I played with setting on my camera as I got ready to snap a few shots of the game. Before too long, my mom showed up too and the three of us sat together.
It's weird; it was just a small-town baseball game- not even minor league-, and it's not like I was expecting it to be boring, but it was so much more interesting than I'd imagined it could be. I was never interested in sports as a kid; far from it. I actively avoided being involved in team athletics. Yet the game tonight really drew me in.
Maybe it was the amateurness of it; the way the kids were gathered on each side of the infield fence to chase after foul balls. The way the crowd actually interacted with the announcer: through the whole first rotation of the away team's lineup, over the PA system would come "Up for the Orioles; John Doe!" and ten or twleve people in the crowd would yell "Who?!?" and the announcer would again say "John Doe!", and they'd yell back "Ohhhh."
I haven't watched a baseball game, including on TV, in something like ten years. I've actually played in a furry softball game, but I haven't sat down and watched a whole game since the last time my parents took me to this same ball park, back when the AAA Kenosha Twins played there, not long after we moved to Wisconsin. Seeing it from a photographer's perspective was wholly different than I'd seen it before. I loved trying to anticipate the action and snapping pictures, despite the fact that my lens wasn't nearly long enough or fast enough. And, somehow, I was actually interested in the game itself in a way I'd never been before. Somehow enough of the rules had sunk into my brain (probably from my dad who played for eight years and coached too) that I was able to follow and understand and really get into it. And for no good, logical, rational reason, I found myself cheering and clapping for the home team, and 'awwwwww'ing every time the away team fielders caught a pop fly for an out. And, you know, maybe that's how it should be.
Best of all, I got to spend two and a half hours sitting and talking with my parents about baseball, about gaming, about random stuff and nothing at all. I don't quite know how to put that part of the night into words. It was just wonderful. Maybe that's part of the heart of baseball too.
I just might find myself on the bleachers again a time or two next year.
The game started at seven-thirty, so around six I called to see if he was still up to going. He wasn't feeling well and thought he might not be up to it. Since Andrea was sore and tired too, I thought maybe I'd just stay home and clean. I'd decided I was going to make the time to do something unusual with my dad, but if he and Andrea weren't up to going out, maybe it wasn't meant to be. Instead, I'd go over and set up the wireless network at their place.
So I called at seven to see how he felt. He wasn't up to going out, but I didn't have a car to get over there with and wasn't up to hauling my laptop and gear over there without one. We almost called the whole thing off; then my dad changed his mind and decided to come out to the park after all. I'm so glad he did!
We met at the entrance just as the national anthem was being sung and we found seats in the bleachers behind third base. I played with setting on my camera as I got ready to snap a few shots of the game. Before too long, my mom showed up too and the three of us sat together.
It's weird; it was just a small-town baseball game- not even minor league-, and it's not like I was expecting it to be boring, but it was so much more interesting than I'd imagined it could be. I was never interested in sports as a kid; far from it. I actively avoided being involved in team athletics. Yet the game tonight really drew me in.
Maybe it was the amateurness of it; the way the kids were gathered on each side of the infield fence to chase after foul balls. The way the crowd actually interacted with the announcer: through the whole first rotation of the away team's lineup, over the PA system would come "Up for the Orioles; John Doe!" and ten or twleve people in the crowd would yell "Who?!?" and the announcer would again say "John Doe!", and they'd yell back "Ohhhh."
I haven't watched a baseball game, including on TV, in something like ten years. I've actually played in a furry softball game, but I haven't sat down and watched a whole game since the last time my parents took me to this same ball park, back when the AAA Kenosha Twins played there, not long after we moved to Wisconsin. Seeing it from a photographer's perspective was wholly different than I'd seen it before. I loved trying to anticipate the action and snapping pictures, despite the fact that my lens wasn't nearly long enough or fast enough. And, somehow, I was actually interested in the game itself in a way I'd never been before. Somehow enough of the rules had sunk into my brain (probably from my dad who played for eight years and coached too) that I was able to follow and understand and really get into it. And for no good, logical, rational reason, I found myself cheering and clapping for the home team, and 'awwwwww'ing every time the away team fielders caught a pop fly for an out. And, you know, maybe that's how it should be.
Best of all, I got to spend two and a half hours sitting and talking with my parents about baseball, about gaming, about random stuff and nothing at all. I don't quite know how to put that part of the night into words. It was just wonderful. Maybe that's part of the heart of baseball too.
I just might find myself on the bleachers again a time or two next year.
