Between the Innings

Is there a sound better than the crack of a bat hitting a baseball or the cheer of a crowd that pulls you back to the TV as a player hits a game-winning grand slam? It isn’t just the exhilaration of watching our favorite team do well. It isn’t even just about the game. It’s about the version of yourself that gets reignited while watching something that holds so many memories. A version of you that has been tucked away. Lost, but not forgotten. At least that’s what happens when I watch baseball.
Back when I was little, I’d spend most of my summers with my grandma and grandpa, and many of my weekends during the rest of the year. Something my grandpa loved to do was watch baseball. Of all Major League Baseball, the Seattle Mariners were his favorite, followed closely by the Los Angeles Dodgers. When it was game time, he’d turn on the TV, settle into his recliner, and I’d sit on the couch to watch with him. If his team was doing well, he’d hoop and holler at every good play or point earned. If they weren’t, there was a lot of “Oh, my aching back! Come on!” He’d tell me how everything worked, where the strike zone was, the difference between a ball and a strike, and all the different player positions. I loved it. I finally got to a point where I could hoop and holler right alongside him, and I actually knew what I was talking about. While his life didn’t revolve around the game like some fans, he took great joy in watching. And I loved it because it was something special for me and my grandpa.
Baseball ended up branching out to other members of my family as well. My dad worked for an auto body shop that had season box seat tickets for the Spokane Indians. They let employees use those seats throughout the season. When we could, we’d go to a Friday or Saturday night game with his coworkers, our friends, or just our family. On the occasions we couldn’t use the shop’s season tickets, we would simply pay for our own general seats and go. One time we went with our pastor and his family. We were back against right field, almost at the very top of the bleachers. The batter, a Spokane Indian player, hit a high fly foul ball. Tiny Stefani was sitting there enjoying her hot dog, unaware that this ball was sailing toward me. All of a sudden, our pastor’s hand shot out in front of me and caught it. Startled, it took me a second to realize what had happened. I ended up getting to take the ball down later and have the team sign it.
Even years later, I love the sound of baseball stadium chatter as the game starts, the crack of a ball making contact with the bat, the smell of hot dogs and ice cream sandwiches. Or my favorite, and this may be a purely Spokane Indians thing, listening to them blast Cotton Eyed Joe across the speakers. There is something so innately comforting and nostalgic about those things that the second I see, hear, or smell them, I’m immediately transported back to a simpler time.
As I grew up and grew away from playing baseball with my dad on hot summer evenings in our yard surrounded by fields, I seemed to grow out of baseball. My friends didn’t like it. The few that liked sports enjoyed football or basketball. Baseball seemed to be a relic that those my age didn’t have time for. So I switched to watching football. It became my new go-to sport with my grandpa, who also enjoyed watching the Seattle Seahawks and the University of Washington Huskies. It was years before I ended up watching baseball again.
It wasn’t until Colin Kaepernick and the NFL protests that I returned to baseball. When football teams across the league, including my own Seahawks, started kneeling during the national anthem, I decided to take a step back from football. When you have the immense privilege of being paid more than most will ever see in their lifetime to play with a ball, and you kneel during the national anthem of a country that gives you that privilege because of the blood spilled by those doing a real job… I couldn’t support the NFL anymore. While there were those in the MLB who knelt or joined the social justice movements of the time, it was nowhere near what was being done in the NFL. Once again, I felt that sense of a simpler time, when these were athletes paid to play the game they supposedly loved for people who loved to watch that same game. It was that simplicity that made me feel like I was home.
Now I know a lot of people who may still be reading this are going, “Stefani, calm down, it’s just a game.” And it is, but it’s a game that has so many happy memories woven into it that remind me of people I love and moments I hold dear. It’s a game that allows me to shut out the noise of the world around me for a few short hours and return to a time when my grandpa, my parents, my sister, my niece, my friends, and I would watch our favorite teams play a game we all loved.