Why I love baseball
A visit to Fenway and a walk-off. Not a bad start to my personal 2023 season.
A visit to Fenway and a walk-off. Not a bad start to my personal 2023 season.
The joyful photograph at the top of the post – which comes from the wonderful photo/blog Real People Eat Local (check it out for their delicious pictures) – is a perfect encapsulation of our day. Summer Saturdays really are the best! Today started relatively early (by Saturday standards) as Andrew had to be at the Cathedral for a choral practice at 8 a.m. Our car is in the shop this weekend waiting for a leaky fuel pump to be repaired (one never wants to smell gasoline in your home garage), so Candice, Andrew and I had to juggle our schedules around the availability of Zipcars – the wonderful car sharing service we swear by. Because we have some 25 Zipcars within about 3 blocks of our house, we picked one up (a little Honda) and were on our way by 7:30. Urban living is great! Swim team meets the past six weeks have their own charm, but they have disrupted the Saturday morning ritual Candice and I established this year. So we were pleased to …
Walk Offs. The name is pretty descriptive. One pitch and the game is over. And last night, I had the chance to see one in person. From my perspective, nothing in sports is so exciting. You may ask, “What’s the difference in a walk off in baseball and a sudden death touchdown or field goal in football, when the last score wins it all?” (I recall Curt Gowdy liked to rename these extra periods “Sudden Victory” in place of “Sudden Death.”) What about the last second shot in basketball? Here’s why…in baseball, the walk off comes as part of the normal course of the game. Baseball is famous for not having a clock. This infuriates some when it is 11 p.m. and you have babysitters at home or an early morning alarm clock is on the horizon for work. But there is no sudden death (or sudden victory) in baseball. When you win with a walk off, it means that the home team has won in the course of the normal rules of the game. It …