15 Years Later

Alright clearly Larsen and I both love baseball.  I don’t remember any significant times that the conversation stopped when we first reconnected to eat heart-clogging and brain-wrecking consumables.  Except for two key instances.  

One was the bathroom break that Larsen returned from with the idea to do whatever the hell this blog is.  The other?  The Cubs were playing.  So occasionally we would both stop and just watch, as if in a joint trance.

That led to us talking baseball, something we both enjoy doing quite a bit.  Specifically, it led to us finding out that we were both chasing the dream goal of attending a baseball game at all thirty Major League stadiums. 

But our respective passions for baseball began in very different ways.

I was not a baseball superstar as a child.  I had average child athleticism, little coordination, and no ability to make decisions on the fly.  You know, like you’d need to do while playing a game where you constantly have to make instant decisions.

What I did have was an unfounded loyalty to my first grade little league team.  We had only one loss, to an undefeated team from the town directly north of us.  The schedule just happened to line up so that we played them again in the last game of the season. 

And this time we won!

It was one of the first times I remember experiencing that unique type of joy, excitement and adrenaline that sports can create.  Being part of that team and seeing our victory unfold in real time was enthralling.  We had finally avenged our only loss to those northern jerks!

The next year, my dad sold the farm and we moved to the town directly north of us.

It’s strange to have such deep regret about a decision you made as a young child, but to this day I still regret this:  I decided not to continue playing baseball.  Why?  Because I refused to play for the north. 

Yes, the team would have been completely different each and every year anyway, but eight-year-old Mike didn’t think like that.  Eight-year-old Mike had unfounded loyalty to his team.  The Chicago Cubs were obviously destined to be a perfect fit for me as a sports fan.

I’ll always consider myself a lifelong Cubs fan, and I have fond memories of hearing Harry Caray and Steve Stone narrate the woes of early and mid-nineties Cubs games.  Sammy Sosa, Mark Grace, Shawon Dunston, these were all names I was familiar with from a very young age.

But that true passion for the North-Siders (go figure) actually didn’t hook me right away.  My early retirement from baseball happened right around the same time a guy named Michael Jordan returned to the Chicago Bulls. 

My first time paying attention to basketball – my first memories of it even – were the Bulls’ record-setting 72-10 championship season.  It’s safe to say that basketball stole my heart for the next three years.

Then Jordan retired (again), and the greatest basketball team of all time disintegrated into a team led by Dickey Simpkins.  Okay maybe he didn’t lead it, but he was the only player I remember recognizing from the previous year.  I was loyal, sure, but ’99 was a TOUGH year to watch the Bulls.  And come on, ten-year-old Mike thought, this was an entirely different team anyway.

I didn’t know what to do.  How would I fill the void left by my first favorite professional sports team?  Where would I place all of my emotions, my passion, my loyalty?  Enter the Chicago Cubs.

Larsen is the math teacher here, so it feels weird in a project he and I are doing together to say that I’m a numbers guy.  But I’m a numbers guy.  Keeping track of statistics is something a lot of fans love for any sport, but it’s especially poignant in baseball. 

The whole game is about statistics.  Every at-bat is a new stat, for better or worse.  Every hit, every strikeout, every time anything happens in a baseball game, the statistics are changing.  There’s always new history to be made, and baseball fans appreciate baseball history with the most obsessive of ’em.  And I was obsessed… eventually.

The stats kept me around, but Sammy Sosa and the ’98 Cubs pulled me in with their exciting and successful season.

Sosa picked up right where Michael Jordan left off with Chicago sports fans.  And, more specifically, for me.  The home run race – controversial as it was later revealed to be – swooped down and grasped me like an osprey sinking its talons into a fish. 

People often complain that baseball is boring.  There are many moments where that can be true.  Some games are an absolute slog.  However, there are also some moments in baseball that are the absolute most fun thing to watch ever.

A guy with power is standing in the batter’s box, having one of the best seasons ever for a power hitter.  Every single pitch has the potential to go flying out of the stadium with a big swing, a loud crack, and the roar of tens of thousands of fans cheering with maximum adulation.

I discovered at age ten that there was absolutely nothing else like that feeling.  Sammy Sosa provided that exciting anticipation every time he stepped to the plate, and he delivered the ultimate payoff sixty-six times that year.

I was hooked and I never looked back.  I devoured all of the information I could about baseball, and the more I learned, the more I adored it.

Now maybe you’re reading this and saying, “But wait!  You stopped watching the Bulls in 1999 when the team split up.  The ’99 Cubs were also bad!  What’s the difference, Mike?”

Frankly, I was already used to the idea of the Cubs being bad, so it wasn’t as big of a shock for me. But the difference is that the Cubs play baseball.  And while I had a pretty huge fan crush on the Bulls, I fell in love with the Cubs. 

I still root for the Bulls.  I still enjoy basketball, and I played it until I reached high school.  But it just isn’t baseball.

And I love baseball.