I am the most unlikely of baseball fans. I did not grow up with baseball fans. My mother would on occasion sit down and watch a World Series game and maybe Dad would sit down with her, but for him it was all about the pigskin. They didn't even have a baseball team at my high school. And on my own I concluded it was a boring game where only brief spurts of action took place in between long periods of nothingness. I would see pitchers whose guts looked they had, pun intended, downed pitchers of beer instead of being finely tuned athletes and dismissed it altogether as a summer distraction and nothing more. That said, I have always loved movies about baseball because they seemed to capture an aura of Americana and nostalgia that was appealing. Baseball movies, Bang the Drum Slowly and Pride of the Yankees notwithstanding, are often feel good movies with happy endings, telling a tale of America at its finest and proudest. They are often tales of hope and realized glory. So maybe the seed was in me all along and just needed a little tending to make it sprout and along came my Lovely Philly Friend, up for the task.
Despite her current residence, Lovely Philly Friend (LPF), is a Pirates fan deluxe. Her husband perhaps even more so. And she was devout in her mission when I first moved here, in advance of the rest of the family and therefore all alone, to introduce me to the city. When spring came, that included baseball. It was something to do, and I love her company, so I tagged along to some games. The first thing you discover is that PNC Park is a jewel of a stadium. The views of downtown, which I believe is a stunning skyline, are breathtaking. I spent the first couple of games drinking Yuengling (PNC Park is where I discovered it) and wandering around the building. The game going on in the background was a mere distraction. LPF made note of my general ignorance of the game and began to teach it to me, but she had a long way to go. When I first moved here, I referred to Andrew McCutchen as the good looking guy with dreads. I had no idea whatsoever who he was and what he was capable of as a player. And he was the only one of the team I could even describe that well. I had never heard that the positions had numbers. I don't think I even knew that a batter could pop off foul balls until the cows came home and not strike out, and certainly wasn't aware that was an actual strategy to try and stay alive at bat and wear the pitcher down. I had no idea about pitch counts or why someone would bunt when no one else was on base, or why managers sent in pinch hitters. What I did know was the the Pirates were a down and out team that hadn't had a winning season in almost 20 years. And while Pittsburghers were gamely (if you will) loyal to their team after all that time, they didn't invest a lot of hard earned dollars into going to games just to watch them lose in person when they could sit at home and watch them lose for free. That made tickets plentiful, so when the rest of the family arrived, it was an easy way to get out of the house on a summer's evening. We went several times that first year, the husband picking up on my continuing education.
But a funny thing started to happen with the team. They actually started winning a few. For a brief time they actually challenged for first place in the division before collapsing to finish as per usual. However, everyone, even me, knew that the days of perennially losing baseball might be nearing its end. Coupled with a growing appreciation of the actual game itself and picking up on the undercurrent of excitement in the fan base, I began to actually go to games to watch the action on the field, not the cavalcade of interesting fans in the stands.
A baseball fan was being born.
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