Thursday, February 25, 2010

Dinner and a Movie? Let's Watch the Game.

Spring training may have Red Sox Nation looking forward to a fresh season, but it had Doug Glanville, who played for the Cubs, Phillies, and the Yankees, reminiscing on years past today. Don't get all excited; this post has nothing to do with the Yankees. It has to do with love.

For Glanville, Spring Training reminds him of his years as a bachelor. Short-lived relationships were made even shorter when he left abruptly every February to play ball in warmer weather. Spring training was a good excuse not to get too serious. This lack of commitment carried over into other portions of his life- he put off purchasing and even settling into a home knowing that at any time he could be transferred to another ball park. He had to make a conscious effort to work on the relationship with his now wife (and to decorate his house).

Maybe I'm doing the same thing. Backwards. Every year I lose Dave to baseball. He starts reading about it in February, makes his fantasy picks in March, tunes in every night at 7:05 starting in April, and finally comes up for air in the fall. This will be our first full baseball season as a married couple, and as Glanville suggests, marriages mixed with baseball take some extra effort.

Glanville writes that the effort baseball requires you to put into your love-life is what makes it work. My love-life, however, is requiring me to put a tremendous amount of effort into baseball. Does it work both ways?

I'll let you know in October.

By the way... my friend Walt pointed me towards Glanville's article "Love and Baseball" on the Nytimes.com Opinionator, and it seemed a more interesting topic for tonight's installment than the planned "what the heck is the draft?" Walt's not the only one who has provided me with interesting reading material for my blog. A new friend and blog follower gave me an amazing book- Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks. Not only is this book helping me figure out the ins and outs of the draft, there is also a handy glossary of baseball slang and a list of acronyms. The book also promises to explain why players grab their crotches, but I haven't gotten to that chapter yet. (Thank you so much!)

2 comments:

  1. Good work al. Keep up the writing. Maybe you join a fantasy league too. Speaking of fantasy what do you thing about this. I am keeping lester in the fourth round of my draft. Do I keep lackey in the 7th? (35 rounds, 8 teams in league, 7 keepers). I am leaning to no. I can never get them to have two week starts together, plus I so not about lackey production at 7. It would make for a fun season of sox baseball.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @ Hunter Killers. Was that English? I think you meant to say that you can never get them to have two start weeks, not two week starts. Why not? There should be weeks where they both start two games.

    ReplyDelete