August 15, 2016: A Day With No Baseball

Monday brought a day off for both the Cubs and the Sox; a day with no baseball in Chicago.

Baseball brings me back to my youth.  This is the main reason why I can feel comfortable ranking it above football.  I did play some football growing up in the Boys Club and at various parks, but it pales in comparison to baseball.

I played many different variations of the game.  The simplest form was in our backyard.  Obviously playing catch was big; my entire family did that.  I liked when my Dad caught for me; I got my most practice pitching during those sessions.  Wiffle ball was another big game we played.  We all played, but I remember my brother and I playing AL vs the NL.  We would bat both lefty and righty, batting like the major leaguers, recording the stats on notebook paper.  At one point, many, many summer days were spent doing that.  Our neighbors had a bigger, longer back yard; their boys were some years older than us.  We would play running bases.  There were 2 bases, one guy with a glove at each base.  Then there were a couple base runners.  The goal was to get from one base to the other.  Playing basic catch wouldn’t allow for this in general… there would be ground balls thrown, pop ups, and even wild throws, which got us running our butts off.  We didn’t have to go far for all this fun.

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It all added up to a bit of baseball in high school; not much more than that.  Won’t get into that story.  I played after that a couple times in a league here and there, but playing baseball slowly faded out of my life.  Now it’s back in… well, sort of.  Now I have my 4 year old to teach.  Our last 8 Saturdays have consisted of his first official baseball class.  It’s been a lot of fun.  Hopefully, he loves baseball as much as me.

Growing up playing a sport, brings you that much closer to it.  Seeing your team never win, makes it that much harder.  It makes what the Cubs are doing this year so exciting; the 108 year quest for the holy grail could actually be coming to an end.  In those playing years, we won a handful of championships on the baseball field; all I’m looking for now is one more.  That is, before my son starts playing on his teams…  The love for baseball will continue either way.  It would be nice to finally bring one home though… Back for 2 on Tuesday.  Go Cubs!