Quiet Day at the Ballpark

5/13/2017

Caveat

For those of you who absolutely love the spectacle of live baseball exactly as it is now, I apologize in advance. I feel a little differently.

The Good Old Days

This post might sound like nostalgic pining for "the good old days" because, well -- it is. A couple of weeks back Alison and I spent a Sunday afternoon at a Washington Nationals baseball game. As much as I love baseball, I was stunned by the unrelenting cacophony that filled every spare second of the multi-hour game, except for those brief, 10-second intervals when the ball was actually in play.

When I was a kid, there was probably a special song or rhythm that was played when the home team hit a home run. That I can understand and appreciate. Now, they pound out the music for anything down to an intentional walk. That I can almost tolerate, because the team has done something positive. But, there is also a special song that is played whenever a foul ball is hit that remains on the field, and accompanies the ball girls as they scamper down the sideline to collect the errant ball. There is another special song that is played as each player comes to the plate, with an MTV-style video playing on the Jumbo-tron. Each player looks like he is sashaying down a fashion catwalk with his bat extended directly toward the viewer.

Between innings, songs blare, t-shirt guns fire into the stands, fans are asked to predict the winner of the race between life-size, presidential bobble-headed humans, and stadium personnel are interviewing fans on the Jumbo-tron regarding various topics most of which I didn't understand.

One topic that I did understand was an announcement for the upcoming STAR WARS Chewbacca Koozie Day at the ballpark. And that got me to thinking...