Baseball

I’m a baseball fan. There, I said it, or rather wrote it. Just three years ago I wasn’t a baseball fan, but the pandemic changed that.

In 2019 G bought an MLB subscription for his hometown team, the Brewers, and he watched quite a bit of baseball, usually I was in the room, but only half paying attention.

In 2020, during the lockdown, MLB opened up their archives and we were able to watch 2019 games for free when the season was delayed. There was something about watching those games, everything seemed so normal, I needed that escape. Crowds in a stadium cheering on their teams? In 2020 that wasn’t happening but I could pretend just a bit while we watched a game. But then I started to get hooked on the game and the players and their stories. We watched the shortened season once it started.

In 2021 we bought a streaming package to watch any game we wanted (excluding media blackouts which for us means we can’t watch Giants, A’s, or Mariners games). But I watched a lot of baseball and in September we made a last minute trip to San Francisco to see the Brewers in person and it was a great trip.

For Christmas G gave me a book on how to score baseball which has plunged me into the intracacies of plays and scoring and deeper into the world of baseball. I’ve scored a couple of games (well, the at bats) and I’m slowly making my way through the more intricate ins and outs of the game. There is a lot left for me to learn and it’s not unusual for a play to happen as we watch a game and one of us wonders aloud, “how would you score that?”

This year we made the trip to San Francisco again and I didn’t leave my seat for the entire game; I didn’t want to miss anything and I find the happenings between innnings so interesting. Most days I watch or listen to a game—Bob Uecker still calls the home Brewers games on the radio, which is amazing. There is something calming about it, it’s a slow game and I know many think it’s boring (if I’m being honest, sometimes it is) but I’ve come to enjoy it more than I would have ever imagined. Go Brew Crew!