Why I Love Baseball

It was about this time every year when I would dust off my batting bag, and wiggle the zipper until it would come undone. All my gear had sat in the garage all fall and winter, left unattended and abandoned. As I unpacked that old glove , cleats, and bat, I became rejuvenated. I would slip that glove on, and feel the soft, broken in leather with that perfect pocket in the webbing from countless hours of playing catch. The little league try-outs were coming up and my brother and I would get the cobwebs out of our rusty arms by tossing an old baseball around our front yard and in the road. Spring was finally here. I have always felt like I was born to love baseball. I was born early in the morning on October 28th, 1986. Earlier that night my dad was sitting in the waiting room watching game seven of the '86 world series between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox. This was the series of the infamous Bill Buckner error, if you can recall with me. I can remember sitting in the forier of our school during lunch time and talking baseball with my fellow sportscaster classmates who discussed the list of topics that we had heard while watching sportscenter before class. We were Stuart Scotts in the making, I swear. Baseball to me means the regional tournament in Moundridge, KS when I was thirteen. Baseball to me means my home town hosting the state tournament when I was fourteen, and losing the battle in the champonship game. Baseball to me means playing catch to pass the time, turing on the game for a relaxing afternoon, or going to Busch Stadium for cold beer and hot dogs. Baseball to me is watching the Kiss Cam during the seventh inning stretch, the hotdog races around the field, the CO2 cannon that deploys t-shirts into the crowds of waving arms and screaming voices. Baseball to me is comprehending that you hit a round ball traveling at a considerable speed, with a round bat that you have to swing at a precise interval in order to make contact; the skill in that is unbelievable. Baseball is being 100% optimistic in sping training, and sick of watching your team disappoint you in August. Baseball is knowing there is always another year. Its the lights that you can see from the highway, revealing a game of thirty year olds playing some slowpitch. It's rounding those bases when you are twelve years old after hitting that two run shot in the bottom of the sixth inning, feeling your pride swell inside you. It's your teammates waiting for you in a mob at home plate as you swing around third. Baseball can be your hope. Baseball can slow you down when everything around you in today's world seems to fly by so fast. I think we all could use a little slow down these days. Here's to baseball, and here is to a brand new season. Go Cardinals!

Kurt "Jag" Carpenter