The American Game

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I live in a sports-free household. Really. My hub does not watch ANY sports. Especially team sports. Ever. Except maybe the Superbowl if we're invited to a party with good snacks. It's not that he doesn't know the rules, he does. It just that he thinks the games are boring. Especially baseball.

I have to admit I didn't grow up watching baseball. My parents watched football (Dad was a huge Cowboys fan), and horse racing, and golf. (Watching televised golf is right up there with root canals in my book...) It was only when I was grown that I learned my dad had coached the Dr. Pepper women's softball team, which was a big deal! So he must have known and loved the sport, and why that didn't translate into watching pro baseball I don't know. So I only came to baseball when my daughter started playing softball, and I loved it. We were Texas Rangers fans. We went to the games, we listened on the radio, and I discovered that--at least to me--there was something magical about baseball. I still try to keep up. I follow the Rangers sporadically, usually all by myself in the kitchen. And I almost always try to watch the World Series, no matter who's playing.

And this year, if not my Rangers, the Houston Astros have a chance! If ever there was a year when Houston needed a boost, this is it!!!

And if ever there was a year that demonstrated the crazy absurdity of baseball, this is it!!! Homers, sliders, wild fly balls, plays missed that should have been made and plays made that should have been missed. A team that has never been in the series, a team that hasn't gone to the series in thirty years! Bonkers all round!

What about you, Reds? Any baseball fans? Have you seen these crazy games?

(I think I have to dig out our copy of Field of Dreams, which is still my daughter's favorite movie. I'd be torn between that and Bull Durham--what a hoot.) Any favorite baseball movies you pull out this time of year?

HALLIE EPHRON: My husband is a huge baseball fan. He roots against the Yankees... so of course FOR the Dodgers (never mind that they're playing the  Astros). What about those beards? It puts me in mind of the Ogden Nash limerick...
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.

I sleep from about the fifth inning on. Wake up near the end... which has lately been MANY innings in. Very exciting games... or at least that's what my husband says.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I love baseball. But um, it's really hard to watch nine whole innings. And you really have to care. SO...the Astros beat the Red Sox, so do we hope they win or lose? But because of the hurricane, I guess..Houston. The think I love about baseball is the mano a mano. A pitcher. A batter. Fielders, each of whom can make the catch--or not--and save--or not--the game. It is SO personal, but is also such a team game. The idea that it takes about as long to throw two bases as it take to run  one. HOW did they know? And there is the person who, at  bottom of the ninth, with two outs and bases loaded, says: Put me in. Ah. The world is divided into the people who say-I can do it, and the ones who hide under the bench. . That's why I love baseball. \

RHYS BOWEN: I'm a sports nut. If someone is competing against someone else I'll watch it, even if it's darts. Yes, in England they televise competitive darts! I even enjoy curling and you can't get much more boring than a stone moving slowly down an ice rink, being swept at with brooms. I'm not too keen on football, but I LOVE baseball. I'm a big Giants fan (well, we did win the World Series three times in five years!) and I what I like best is to go to spring training in Scottsdale when I'm there in the winter. Such an intimate setting and you can see the players up close and personal. AT and T park in SF not so much. It's always freezing cold and windy when I go. But I'm happy to watch on television until the score is really bad and then I can switch channels.

JENN McKINLAY: Card carrying member of Red Sox Nation here! I watched so many games with my grandmother as a kid - she was a huge Carl Yastrzemski fan - that baseball has always been a part of my life. After I moved to AZ, the Diamondbacks arrived and I split my allegiance between the two teams. When Hub and I were first dating, his dad shared his season tickets with us. I like to think those baseball games gave us plenty of time to make sure we were each other's "one" so no matter what baseball will always have a special place in my heart.

INGRID THOFT: With a few exceptions, baseball is not my thing, although I will always be a Red Sox fan since it’s practically engraved on your birth certificate if you’re born in Boston.  So what are those exceptions?  A game at Fenway is an experience unto itself.  The guys hawking “beah!” in the stands, the Green Monster, Yawkey Way.  If ever you have the chance to take in a game at Fenway, take it.  I’ve also had the pleasure of attending a couple of Seattle Mariners' games perched high above the stadium in a suite, which really is a whole other ball game.  The game is still the same, but somehow, the time passes more quickly when you’re in a comfy seat with catered food!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I married into Red Sox fandom, and I've come to enjoy the games the way Ross did - over the radio. I love puttering around, maybe cleaning up in the kitchen, while Joe Castiglione describes the action in his inimitable voice. If it's not the Sox going to the World Series? Enh. I don't care.

Now MY passion is SEC college football, and that's the one I passed on to Ross and the kids. Alabama is my team (my father was a Bama grad) but I'll happily watch almost any SEC match-up. I do feel, by and large, that baseball is a game that is best seen live, and football is a sport that is improved by being on TV (love those instant replays!)

LUCY BURDETTE: I love the way Hank described it--a team sport and yet so personal. When I was a kid, we lived outside Detroit for a while so we all got caught up in the Tigers--went to games, listened on the radio, knew all the names...Bill Freehan, Al Kaline, Denny McLain. And they won the World Series the year we moved again. I did a psychology internship in New Haven CT, which is precisely between Yankee and Red Sox territory, so I rooted for the Mets. And they beat the Red Sox to win the series in 1986. I love this quote about an error that first baseman Bill Buckner (RS) made to lose game six:

"Bill Buckner has just limped off the field, carrying the weight of the world on his back. He can ice those aching ankles all night so he can play in Game Seven of the World Series tonight, but there isn't enough ice to freeze the pain in his heart."

-- Ray Sons, Chicago Sun-Times

Since then, I haven't gotten caught up in baseball much--my heart's with the UConn lady Husky basketball team!

DEBS: And we are on to Game 7!!! Hank, I love your description, too. I don't think I've ever heard a sportswriter capture the appeal of baseball better. 

Okay, readers. Who are you rooting for, if you're rooting????