take me out....
Apr. 12th, 2002 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamajoanI'm a creature of routine. Familiar routines make me feel good. Especially fun, exciting routines that take me back to the childhood times when everything was new and exciting.
Like the whole routine of going to the baseball game. You leave my mom's house (she still lives in the same place where I grew up), walk a half-block to the bus stop, wait for the bus. You take the bus into Boston, get off at Comm. Ave., turn right, and walk. The closer you get to the park, the more people you're walking with. Moms, dads, kids, grandparents, already-half-drunk frat boys; everyone goes to the game. As you get closer and closer, you hear the sound of scalpers ("Tickets, who needs tickets?") and hawkers ("Getcher Red Sox caps!" and lately "Yankees Suck t-shirts, ten bucks!"). You stop in the Store-24 for your soda. Then you turn the corner and start up the hill and suddenly you can see the lights and the big green sign reading "Fenway Park." You buy your program book from a guy on the street. You walk over the Mass. Turnpike and down the hill and there are cops everywhere and people selling peanuts and the guy with the "Jesus Saves!" flyers who Just Won't Quit.
You walk in the door, give the guy your ticket, and go into the dark underground of the park. You go down a ramp, around a corner, and up a ramp ..................... and there it is.
Fenway Park.
The green grass. The brown dirt. The Green Monster. The lights, the fans, the umpires in black, the players in white and blue and green. The roar of the crowd, the crack of the bat. The echo of the announcer over the loudspeaker. The drunken fans yelling their progressively less coherent insults at the players and umpires. The hot dogs. The pretzels. The beer. The vendor guys throwing bags of peanuts like footballs. The kids screaming for autographs and foul balls.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park!"
Bliss.
Of course, tonight's game wasn't quite perfect that way. For one thing, they wouldn't let me in with my bag. New policy, apparently. Had to walk way over to my mom's workplace (fortunately, not actually THAT far away) and leave my stuff there. For another, it was fuckin' freezing. Wished I'd brought gloves. Gloves, for chrissake! At Fenway! And for a third, the Sox, uh, kind of lost the game. Just a little.
But still. Baseball. You gotta love it. There's no experience like it.
Like the whole routine of going to the baseball game. You leave my mom's house (she still lives in the same place where I grew up), walk a half-block to the bus stop, wait for the bus. You take the bus into Boston, get off at Comm. Ave., turn right, and walk. The closer you get to the park, the more people you're walking with. Moms, dads, kids, grandparents, already-half-drunk frat boys; everyone goes to the game. As you get closer and closer, you hear the sound of scalpers ("Tickets, who needs tickets?") and hawkers ("Getcher Red Sox caps!" and lately "Yankees Suck t-shirts, ten bucks!"). You stop in the Store-24 for your soda. Then you turn the corner and start up the hill and suddenly you can see the lights and the big green sign reading "Fenway Park." You buy your program book from a guy on the street. You walk over the Mass. Turnpike and down the hill and there are cops everywhere and people selling peanuts and the guy with the "Jesus Saves!" flyers who Just Won't Quit.
You walk in the door, give the guy your ticket, and go into the dark underground of the park. You go down a ramp, around a corner, and up a ramp ..................... and there it is.
Fenway Park.
The green grass. The brown dirt. The Green Monster. The lights, the fans, the umpires in black, the players in white and blue and green. The roar of the crowd, the crack of the bat. The echo of the announcer over the loudspeaker. The drunken fans yelling their progressively less coherent insults at the players and umpires. The hot dogs. The pretzels. The beer. The vendor guys throwing bags of peanuts like footballs. The kids screaming for autographs and foul balls.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fenway Park!"
Bliss.
Of course, tonight's game wasn't quite perfect that way. For one thing, they wouldn't let me in with my bag. New policy, apparently. Had to walk way over to my mom's workplace (fortunately, not actually THAT far away) and leave my stuff there. For another, it was fuckin' freezing. Wished I'd brought gloves. Gloves, for chrissake! At Fenway! And for a third, the Sox, uh, kind of lost the game. Just a little.
But still. Baseball. You gotta love it. There's no experience like it.
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no subject
Date: 2002-04-12 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-04-12 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-04-12 06:32 am (UTC)Also, one at Wrigley.
It's so easy to wax poetic about baseball, you know? It's just so... pastoral and timeless [not a nice way of saying *boring*, though it can be that, sometimes, too) and part of summer that to be without it is wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrongity, wrong-o.
I think I appreciate it much more than I did as a child, when it was always there, unquestioningly. After the horrors of the Mets in the early '90s, and then the strike and no World Series [I still can't get over the fact that there was no World Series that year], I now appreciate baseball as sport and icon, not just as a Mets fan.
no subject
Date: 2002-04-12 07:23 am (UTC)You are so right. Baseball is as much an emotional experience as anything. Your loving description of the gameday ritual was so perfect; even though I've never been to Fenway (yet ) it mirrored my own experiences at Wrigley.