Oh, those Orioles...

I've been having a casual fling with baseball the last couple years.  I had a fling with it a while back, after my ex- took me to a game at Camden Yard back in the 90s when Cal Ripken Jr. was still with the Orioles and the team was really strong. Granted, a few of the players from back then turned out to be questionable sorts, like Rafael Palmiero and Roberto Alomar. But they were good at the time and the team played well, and I started getting into the game and following other teams, as well. And then the Os traded off some of those strong players and Ripken retired, and I started watching bicycle racing instead (though that didn't last more than a few years, either, once the doping scandals began to explode that sport).

But I've started getting into baseball again over the last couple years. I don't have much of a head for stats, and can't often sit still long enough to watch a broadcast game. But I love the hell out of going to live games-- Picking a not-too-expensive seat that's shady but still has a good view, wolfing down a hot dog or Camden Yard crab cake, making a mess with peanut shells under my seat, and learning to tell a ball from a strike. I go by myself, because other people always want to talk and you end up missing stuff that way.  It can be very exciting, and even when it's not it's still a lot of fun. And I certainly always get a huge kick out of this--



But... the Os are pretty horrible this year. They've got some decent players, like Manny Machado (who they're apparently thinking of trading for some incomprehensible-to-me reason), Adam Jones, and Jonathan Schoop. Others, though, like Chris Davis, are just not having a good season.  The team is currently tied with Kansas City for the position of second worst team in both leagues, trailed only by the Chicago White Sox.  And yet I can't bring myself to switch allegiances, not now that I've begun to get to know the various players. 

So this morning, a very rainy morning that was definitely too wet for baseball, I was enjoying a spectacularly delicious breakfast at one of my new favorite Baltimore restaurants, Ida B's Table (the greens and the grits are the best I've ever eaten in. my. life.) and reading a collection of short stories and essays by G.K Chesterton.  In a story titled The Perfect Game, I came across a paragraph that humorously sums up what it's like watching the Orioles this year.  The characters in the story are playing croquet, but I shall substitute appropriate baseball terms--


“Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson!” I cried, patting him affectionately on the head with a [bat], “how far you really are from the pure love of the sport—you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love [baseball]. You do not love [baseball] until you love being beaten at [baseball]. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art's sake. If we may see the face of [Baseball] herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish; and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates ..., vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls, impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within the pedantic boundaries of the mere [bandbox]. Our balls seek honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the [stands behind home plate] and [behind the foul line]; they are [not] to be found [beyond the scoreboard or] the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a pure and hopeless passion do I worship [baseball]. I love the game itself. I love the [diamond] of grass marked out with chalk or [dirt], as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the [bat], and the [smack of the gloves] is music. ... You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry consolation of being able to [swing] and to hit the [ball].” 


To paraphrase the old joke about pizza and sex, baseball is like pizza--  When it's good, it is sooooooooo good. And when it's bad... it's still pretty good.  Go, Os.