Take me out to the Ball Game

Today's baseball game was a tonic. The Tigers won 10-3, and Miggy hit one of those home runs which you knew was gone off the bat. All you have to do is just sit back and enjoy such magnificent feats. Jarrod Saltalamacchhia had three hits to cross the Mendoza line, one a home run of his own, and Daniel Norris got the win despite not being at his best. Even Anibal Sanchez had an easy Ninth, despite his troubles with the gopher ball the last two seasons. The homeboys were in control all the way.

Yet more than that. I was with good friends who appreciate baseball (and are good friends otherwise), and met a new friend along the way (his rum luck). We jived each other, and we talked baseball even though there were no balks. That last part is an in-joke which I do not choose to explain at this time by the way. But it was the kind of day which, at the very high risk of hyperbole I must admit, made me appreciate life.

Baseball does that. I won't say that other sports cannot do that, but I do believe that other games are hard pressed to the task. Baseball is not so fast that it can't be followed, not so complicated that it can't be readily understood, not so brutal that you risk life altering injuries playing it. It is the game of summer. And summer is of course the high point of the year.

On this day, I needed that tonic. Explain it as you might: dame fortune, good luck, the planets aligned; Providence. But I needed today. And I was not failed.