A few different times when I was in my teens, my dad, my younger brother and I would go on a sports-themed road trip. This particular one 12 years ago took us from our home in suburban Detroit to baseball games in Cincinnati, Louisville, and finally St. Louis. I have good memories of this trip: watching on TV as Germany obliterated Brazil in the World Cup; seeing Matt Adams (I could tell it was Matt Adams) hit what I thought was a triple in Busch Stadium from way, way up in the Gateway Arch (turns out he was actually out at third); exchanging subtle low-fives with my brother as the Cardinals failed to win the game we went to the next day. Even the sheer nothingness that defined the drive through Southern Indiana and Illinois comforts me in retrospect. Most surreal of all these moments, though, was the sky on the night we saw the Reds play in Cincy.
July 7, 2014, I went to the Reds game and the sky caught fire. As the Sun sank in right field, it lit up the low clouds with a riot of reds and oranges and the purple of an old bruise. Without looking it up, I couldn't have told you how the game went—my second-most prominent memory from my lone trip the Reds' ballpark was the fact that they had "Teenage FBI" by Guided By Voices on the pregame playlist, which rocked. But I'd never observed anything in person like that combination of mammatus clouds and blazing sunset before or since. You can see in the photos that the heavens looked like a scene out of an alien-invasion movie, and I recall the crowd being awestruck but also a little anxious, like maybe they should be feeling more urgency instead of continuing to watch a baseball game under a blood red sky. I also never forgot that the website Deadspin, a future employer of mine, linked the pictures, which made me feel like I'd attended a special occasion.
(In case you were wondering about the whole "Red sky at night, sailor's delight" proverb, there was recorded precipitation in Cincinnati each of the following two days after this game.)
How often do I spend three hours at a time outside, other than a trip to a baseball game? Not enough, I Imagine. But baseball—under the sky, under the lights, in the heat—is a blessing of getting to watch time pass around you. A game is a unit of measure of my life. A day turns to night. A sky turns red and it’s what I remember 12 years later. The game isn’t just the game. The game is your entire world while the game lasts.
It's a cliché, but I really like the saying that goes something like "Every time you go to a baseball game, you'll probably see something you've never seen before." I've visited 19 MLB ballparks in my life, and they arrange themselves in my head not as complete games but as little bits and bobs. Jonathan Papelbon's entrance at Fenway. A pitcher named Zebby making his MLB debut in Minnesota. The 97-degree heat at Camden Yards while I stubbornly stayed in my seat the entire afternoon. Tony Campana's inside-the-park home run in Wrigley—the only homer of his career. Tony Gwynn Jr.'s walk-off single on the Fourth of July in San Diego, which my dad and I got to mention to Gwynn Sr. later that summer in Cooperstown. Fragments, but whole, in a way—the sum of a life spent with baseball.
