Take Me Out to the Ballgame

God I love baseball! Everything about it. I love the smell of fresh roasted peanuts and ballpark franks on the grill. I love watching mothers and fathers holding their small child's hand as they set foot into a baseball stadium for the first time. It is the most amazing thing to watch a little kid sit in their seat with their glove in hand, hoping just hoping that one of their idols will hit a foul ball their way.

Baseball is America's pasttime. It is what brings our country together. Generation after generation have set foot in the greatest ballparks in the world. Baseball allows us the opportunity to share something with our grandparents, our parents and soon our own children. We love to worship, feel frustrated, let down, hurt and empowered by the same teams as our grandmothers, fathers and friends do.

It gives me chills every time I hear "grounder to Foulke and for the first time in 86 years the Boston Red Sox are the World Champions." I can't wait to have kids and take them to Fenway Park. Fenway Park is my heaven. It is the one place in the world where I know that life is good. It is the place I go to feel alive again. Though I could not be there this weekend in person, watching it on TV and seeing the skyline of my city sent chills down my spine. It reminded me of what our country can be.

People who are not fans of the game don't understand how you can cry when players of new and old can say goodbye to a field that has brought both sorrow and happiness as in the case of the St. Louis Cardinals and their beloved Busch Stadium. People who are not fans of the game don't understand how generation after generation parents have walked their children through the tunnel leading into some of the most exciting places to watch a game...Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Camden Yard, Yankee stadium.

These people will never understand why every time I hear James Earl Jones voice in Field of Dreams I get goose bumps and begin crying. And so on the eve of the Post season I leave us with the greatest movie speech ever. The speech that reminds us all of why the boys of summer, the men of October have such a special place in our hearts.


James Earl Jones as Terrance Mann:
Ray, people will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. "Of course, we won't mind if you have a look around," you'll say. "It's only twenty dollars per person." They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it; for it is money they have and peace they lack.
And they'll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game, and it'll be as if they'd dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they'll have to brush them away from their faces.
People will come, Ray.
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.