In the last 48 hours, I experienced different sides of a baseball diamond just like I was 12 or 13 years old again.
Sunday brought about a group of 11 "gentlemen" (I use this word loosely) playing 12" softball for a couple hours, while a day later had me, Jen, her friend Megan & her boyfriend Russ partaking in a White Sox/Yankees game.
There were just a few differences in each of these experiences than my teenage days.
In the case of Brian (Age 30) v. softball, the ball won. And I think it beat most of us "old" bastards, based on the lack of skill, speed, power and coordination that many of us displayed. Unlike days past, which featured mammoth blasts and amazing catches, this particular day saw guys eating hamburgers on the field and hot dogging on the base paths. There were very few plays which showed any skill or grace. My only moment in the sun (one which burned both of my arms and neck) was tracking down a ball about 35 yards away from me in full-sprint mode, finishing it off with a Louganis-like dive to make the catch.
However, being the "old man's diamond experience" blog here, this couldn't come without injury. About 10 minutes after we finished playing, I felt a groin injury develop. It didn't last long luckily, but the fact that it even occurred made me realize how different sports experiences would be after the age of 30, especially if I go years without playing these sports. Whether it be some extra stretching, warming up or practice, I will need to treat these activities differently when I play in the near future.
And as far as the ole ball game with the White Sox and Yankees goes, Brian (Age 30) has a much different look towards the game than Brian (Age 13) did. Age 30 lives in a sports fandom culture that is now aware of all the cheating going on in sports. Where as with football where performance-enhancers are largely ignored by the general public, the cheaters in baseball have angered the fans, who supposedly want a clean, honest game. Age 30 Brian is so numb to it all that his favorite experience with the game lies mainly in the endless data mining that he does, as if he was 5 years old again, learning math at a very early age by trying to figure out a player's batting average. Watching the actual product and pretending to get angry at these players has no appeal to Brian Age 30. After all, the memories of the home run chase, as drug-induced as it might have been, produced real excitement and enjoyment in baseball fans everywhere. Hell, many of our favorite musicians would not have written the classics that you still listen to today without their own version of performance-enhancing drugs. Knowing that these guys in the past did PEDs doesn't influence how I felt at those moments of my sports-watching life. I may be in the minority with these feelings, but all these guys getting busted feels good on one hand (because they're weeding out the cheaters) but on another hand feels like a CD that can't get past that skip on Track 9 (worn out and annoying to hear).
I can no longer look at these guys as heroes, and to be honest, they never should have been my heroes. As we grow older, we realize these athletes are humans just like all of us. They cuss, drink, smoke, and have other bad vices (some worse than others) just like all of us. Putting these guys on a pedestal isn't fair to them, and it sure as hell isn't fair to the kids who buy their jerseys expecting these guys to be model citizens. Let's enjoy the game, and instead of expecting a $30M man being your kid's hero, how about you do what you can to make sure your kid looks at YOU that way instead?
So as I sat there, listening to the boos raining down on Alex Rodriguez in his first appearance of 2013, I had a lessened version of the above paragraphs in my head. A-Rod is days away from likely serving a suspensions through the end of the 2014 season (over 200 games), so people had to get their last shots in on him before he disappears onto his own island. I couldn't work up that same anger, as described above. I was observing kids around me and how they were reacting to the chorus of boos. Some emulated the people around them, while others weren't really sure how to react. If the Age 13 version of me lived in the Age 30 world I current inhabit, I would likely be in the latter category.
Think about it from a teenager's point of view: ever since you've been following baseball, all you have ever heard about on Sportscenter has been about guys taking drugs that makes their performance better. You hear all of the adults around you, whether they be on the sports shows you have watched or the adults (like your dad or uncles), who share a mix of anger, disappointment and resentment towards those guys who cheated over the past couple decades. You want to embrace the sport and the athletes who you try to emulate when in the batter's box in Pinto league, but how do you react when coming across this?
Between these two experiences, I realized that I will always love playing it while I can (in this case, it was 12" softball - same difference in this story) and following it. After all, the statistics, which I believe were largely responsible in my math abilities being so strong from an early age, will always be there. Even if the players playing it on the professional levels might not be clean, I will always have a special place in my heart for the game.
