A few of the many reasons that I love baseball:
1. Baseball is a sport in which you don’t run out of time, you run out of opportunities. Baseball doesn’t rely on massive bodily collisions or continual action. Baseball is all about suspense.
2. My dad used to take my mom, my sisters, and me to Calgary Cannons games when I was a kid. He would buy us each a hotdog, soda, and then ice cream cones for dessert. Dinner at the ballpark.
3. Winter is, alas, not my favorite season. Spring training, and then opening day, are the perfect markers of the end of snow and the beginning of sun.
4. There is nothing in the world like a lazy summer late-afternoon at the ballpark. And the crack of a bat.
5. Memories of my dad listening to baseball games on the radio in the evening. He is a San Francisco Giants fan and, if the weather was just right, he could pick up their broadcasts all they way up in Calgary. Of course, these days you can just listen on the internet (and I often do).
6. Speaking of that, baseball is the one sport that seems like it was completely made for radio. You can close your eyes while listening to a baseball broadcast and the entire game comes alive in your head. Try doing that with football, hockey, or basketball. This is particularly the case when listening to great play-by-play guys.
7. Baseball is the first professional sport that I remember watching live; watching Fernando Valenzuela pitch against the Montreal Expos at Dodger Stadium. And, being one excited little league kid, of course I brought my glove to the game.
8. Baseball has its own anthem, and everybody knows it by heart.
9. Baseball has many incredible stories.
AND, going into extra innings…
10. Baseball has deeply held traditions.
11. Baseball begets poetry.
12. Baseball has Yogi Berra.