Why I love baseball.

I love baseball.  It doesn't even make sense for me to love baseball, I don't like sports.  But I love baseball. I love it because my family is from Chicago, and baseball is sorta a religion there.  

There is a loyalty to baseball, like my Grandfather's faithful devotion to Cubs, he would never swear or shout, good or bad games.  He would smile or shake his head.
 There is always next year, you know.
 There is a sentimentality to baseball, that makes great movies like "Field of Dreams" and "The Natural" that people like my mom watch over and over until they can quote whole sections.
 I love the sun to hot on my face and a beer in a paper cup watching a farm team. I love being able to see the players faces, the way they spit and scuff, the fights, the squints, the little hand gestures.  I swear I don't have a freakin' clue what they are talking about, but, hell, the ball goes up and I'm on my feet with rest of them, yelling.

I don't like sports.  Really.  

But I love a sweaty little kid smell and a sprinkle of freckles under a baseball cap and opening day circled big in red on the calender.

"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past...It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. "