My 500 Word Baseball Essay

Baseball is a game that ignites the senses, sights, smells, sounds, touch and even taste.  It is entering Chavez Ravine for the first time, clutching your father’s hand, and seeing the green grass and the bleached home whites with the crisp blue lettering.  It is the taste of peanuts and a Dodger dog.  It is the heckler down the first base line giving grief to the batter in the on deck circle.  It is the voice of Vin Scully from the transistor hidden under your pillow since a game has gone past your bedtime.

Baseball unites families and is able to mend wounds between fathers and sons with simple conversations about statistics, box scores and umpires.  It is the teenage son and the distant father, who reconnect when talking about their favorite team or players.  It is the only hug between father and son during his teenage years because their team just clinched the pennant.

Baseball is a thinking man’s game,  but then again it requires no formal education to excel at it.  It can be played by all, regardless of economic status.  It requires intellectual skill as will as physical talent.  It is the uniting of an impoverished Dominican teenager and a grizzled 39 year old veteran in a moment of joy through accomplishments together on the field.

Baseball is tradition.  It is history.  It  played a large role in integrating the nation through a turbulent time in the nation’s history.   It was unjust and shut heroes out for a time, but it’s good men prevailed in uniting blacks and whites, latins and asians into the fold of the grand game.

Baseball has it’s heroes: Babe, sunshine, Honus, Gehrig, summer, Jackie, Willie, Campy, Sandy, stadium lights, Cal.  And also it’s villians: Ty, rain, Judge Landis, winter, darkness, steroids, the black sox.   

Baseball brings memories alive and is guilty of emitting both joy and misery to millions.  It evokes tears from the sight of a wrecking ball at Ebbets or Crosley.  It is unfairly cruel to some, and unbelievably giving to others.  It is the billy goat in Chicago, the piano in a Massachusetts lake, and rally towels, thongs, and caps.    

Baseball is summer.  It is the joy of school being dismissed for months.  It is trading cards and sophisticated board games.  It educates a young boy to learn the ins and outs of mathematics in decimal points and percentages.  

Baseball encourages hard work and practice.  It is throwing a ball through a tire in the backyard or against the barn door.  It is sore arms and skinned knees.  It is playing until the sun goes down.  It is the sweat on a young man’s brow as he heads home for dinner after hours on the ball field with his friends.  It is a reflective conversation with those friends 30 years later at a high school reunion, recalling those joyous moments of childhood.

Baseball is playing catch with dad in the backyard.  Yeah, that’s baseball.