Just something I wrote a bit ago. I saw Spring Training tickets went on sale today! I’m looking forward to baseball season.

By Mickaela Good Photography

Baseball is a great fucking sport. It is what I grew up with, what I played on a team, what I played with my dad and brothers, my grandfather. It has so much history, so many characters…. It is not so much about winning or losing but the experience. Although I am not really a gung-ho patriotic, baseball is my idea of American. The song goes “root for the home team, if they don’t win its a SHAME”. Not “if they don’t win its a waste of time, travesty, end of the world, I want my beer money and sobriety back, etc…” I want everyone to love baseball. I don’t care how they love it. If they only love it as of last year because they live in the bay and the Giants won the World Series like the 42,000 fans that have been at ATT for the last 60something games then that’s fine. If they’ve loved it since they were born and were there when Roseboro and Marichal got into it at Candlestick like my dad, that’s fine too. (The one exception is that prissy girl that sat behind me one night. If she can never go to a sports event again I would be eternally grateful.) Its not so much about the Giants or any other team as it is about the baseball. Its not really the game mechanics, because believe me it can be a damn boring game. Its about the camaraderie, spirit, the hot dogs, the strange get-up, the sharing of the event, the rivalries. (I would like to point out that the Brian Stowe event is super horrible because that doesn’t happen in baseball, our rivalries are supposed to be cute and happen on the field. Football and basketball are famous for burnin’, lootin’, and the like in Cali, but not baseball. Com’on guys, why so hood?) So getting back to band wagon fans… Maybe “real” fans look down on them, but I don’t hate. I want to share the amazing sport. Last year the city’s atmosphere was unstoppable and the charisma of many of the players transcended the ballpark. Hopefully these new fans stay on long enough that they keep buying tickets even when Buster never comes out of rehab, Huff retires his thong, and Rowand is long gone… Hopefully they stay long enough to fall in love with the spirit, the sound, the taste, the amazing experience that is baseball. Hopefully they never see going to a losing game as a waste of time. Hopefully they come into my bar and keep buying beer.