Getting back to baseball, once again

  • By Mike Dewey
  • May 1, 2011
  • 294
                        
SUMMARY: Taking in a minor league game gives Mike Dewey not only the chance to live in the present, but to remember why it is that baseball still means so much to those care. We all have our own minds, our own memories, our own opinions. So when I mention the year 1954, you probably won't think, "That's the year my parents were married." But I will. And when you think of 1964, you might not remember that the Beatles hit the Top 40 with 19 different songs. But I do. And if the year's 1974, many will doubtless recall that Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, the first president ever to be forced from office. If it's 1984 we're talking about, my thoughts coalesce around George Orwell's masterpiece of thought control, a novel published four years after the end of World War II. You may know Big Brother's slogans: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. But if the year in question is 1994, and you're a baseball fan, it means only one thing. The strike that ended the season and canceled the World Series. The year that many people decided that the National Pastime had lost its way. A time that opened the door for professional football -- currently mired in a misguided lockout -- to become America's preeminent sport. Yes, 1994 was the nadir. Baseball had survived wars and famine, Depression and scandal. It had never cut its own throat. But that's what happened when greed heads got their hands on the controls. And some people, who'd loved baseball since they were children and had invested so much of their, well, love for it decided enough was enough. I was one of them. "I will never, ever attend another game so long as I live." My words, or something akin to them, were published. And I lived by my pledge for season after season, never once darkening a stadium with my shadow, despite the fact that it cut such a huge hole in my heart. "I wish I could be like Mike," a colleague once wrote, upon admitting that his boycott had lasted only until the next summer. "But I can't." From 1995 until the spring of 2000, I stayed away. Friends with tickets called, knowing I'd refuse. Family members forgave and forgot. Fans by the hundreds of thousands flocked back. But I stayed true. For five full seasons, I turned my back on the only game that meant anything to me. "You're only hurting yourself, you know," someone would say. "I mean, you know everything -- the stats, the records, the standings -- and you still read the box scores every day." "Your point?" I asked. "I have tickets to the Yankee game," he said. "It's time to get back." "No," I said. "I'm never going back. They canceled the World Series. Not even Hitler ever did that." "It's a business," my friend said. "Not a war." So, after staying true to my word for the last five years of the 20th century, I relented. I caved. And here's the kicker. My friend wanted to leave after the seventh inning because a viciously cold wind was blowing in off Lake Erie and it was frigid that May evening. "I've never, ever, left a game early in my life," I said, "and I'm not going to start tonight. I'll stay and hitch home if I have to." Because it was just wonderful to be back. I'd missed it so much. Just walking in, seeing that emerald cathedral again, made me stop in my tracks and breathe it in again. There is almost nothing in this world that overwhelms the senses like that moment. The impossible beauty of the outfield and the white lines bracing the infield, clean and straight, that lead into eternity. The aroma of roasted peanuts. The sound of a ball smacking into the catcher's mitt. The tang of mustard slathered on a hot dog. The heft of a pen in your hand when you inscribe the starting lineups on your scorecard I was reminded, once again, of that sensory overload the night after Easter when a friend of mine offered freebies to a Kinston Indians game. It was an offer, to quote Don Corleone, that I couldn't refuse. Minor league baseball at the Class A level has become a lifeline over the past dozens seasons. My wife and I have always made sure to attend at least one game a year and, most of the time, go more often than that. It's become a very large part of what it means to have lived in eastern North Carolina since the turn of the millennium. Baseball, at Grainger Stadium, is life writ large, making our decision to relocate seem all the more wise. My friend understands all this and he knows that, given a chance to watch one of Cleveland's top pitching prospects take the hill, I'd be there. True, Drew Pomeranz only threw three innings and true, the K-Tribe lost to Salem, but just being back in the ballpark made me feel, well, happy. I kept score, something Mom always did when our family saw games in St. Louis and Cincinnati, Boston and Chicago. Some families vacation in Disney's America. Mine made sure to make time for baseball. One of the most cherished of all Dewey family heirlooms is a scorecard, kept by Mom on Aug. 19, 1969, when we witnessed a no-hitter thrown in Wrigley Field by a lefty named Ken Holtzman. Dutifully and diligently, Mom recorded each out as it occurred. All except for the final out which, as you might expect, threw the Friendly Confines into mass celebration. So it's still there, that blank square on a scorecard, the one Mom never filled in. But it wasn't because she left early. It was because we'd been part of history. Baseball can do that. Even when you pretend not to care. Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560.


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