I Thought I’d Miss It More

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it…” - Henry David Thoreau’s Walden

I’ve been to exactly one baseball game this year. Back in May.

Most years, I go to fifteen or twenty, all over the country. In 2014, I went to 248 games across all 48 contiguous states. I’ve built a good portion of my life, and an identity called Baseball Buddha, around paying attention to this game.

This season, I haven’t paid nearly as much attention. What surprises me is how little I’ve missed it.

I also haven’t posted here in two months. Every time I consider writing something, I wonder what I’m adding. There are already so many voices. So many opinions. We rehash the same arguments, find another person to be outraged with, and come back tomorrow to do it again.

My interest has faded for stretches before. Maybe this is simply another one of those years. But turning sixty has me thinking about attention, about how I spend it and how much of it I give away out of habit.

Baseball has received a lot of mine.

Why?

I can name what I love. The ballparks. The uniforms. The conversations with strangers. The connection to being a kid buying baseball cards with paper-route money. The way a game gives you permission to sit somewhere for a few hours with very little required of you.

Those things still matter to me. I don’t regret the time or the travel. But I’m curious about how affection becomes obligation. At what point do I keep following because I’ve always followed? Does calling myself Baseball Buddha make me feel I should have something to say when I don’t?

Then there’s everything we bring into the ballpark with us.

Baseball is a small enough world to see some of our contradictions clearly. We demand fairness and gladly take a bad call that goes our way. We talk about character, then negotiate how much of it we require from someone who can help us win. We expect accountability, with exceptions conveniently available for our own team.

I care about that. I get angry about it. I also know how satisfying it can be to examine somebody else’s shortcomings instead of my own.

Owners bother me, particularly when they ask fans for loyalty while giving us reason to question theirs. A team gets its meaning from generations of people who care about it, yet those people have very little control over what happens to it.

So is my decision to keep buying tickets.

I’m interested in that uncomfortable space between what I criticize and what I support. Baseball gives me plenty of opportunities to stand there.

It also gives me somewhere to put the harder questions for a while. There’s always another game to think about. Another season coming. A familiar calendar that keeps moving while we get older.

At sixty, I’m more conscious that I don’t have an unlimited number of summers. Spending an evening at a ballpark can be a wonderful use of one. I don’t believe every hour needs to accomplish something. But I do want to recognize when I’m enjoying my life and when I’m just keeping myself occupied.

This year, baseball has occupied less of it. I thought that would leave a bigger hole.

I’m still sitting with that.

What does my love of baseball help me see, and what does it help me avoid?

That’s something I want to write about. Including the answers that don’t make me look particularly good.