the boys of summer
I used to think that it didn’t get any better than springtime in the San Francisco Bay Area; given a choice, why would anyone live anywhere else? Having broadened my horizons since then, I realize that springtime is beautiful in lots of places, including southern New Hampshire. The color green is practically a visual assault, and there are so many baby birds and fuzzy woodland creatures scampering around, it looks like a Disney movie. Unfortunately, the State of New Hampshire seems to have decided to stop cleaning up roadkill as a way to lower expenses, so the highways have become a grizzly scene of blood-splattered carnage. Scamper FASTER, fuzzy woodland creatures!!
Last night my cousin treated me to a baseball game. Now, this is what “baseball game” means to me, in terms of going to see the A’s at the Oakland Coliseum: either you take BART (public commuter rail), sitting elbow to elbow with someone who may or may not be insane, a gangster, or come from another country where standards of personal hygiene and deodorant application vary from one’s hopes and expectations, then walk 20 minutes over a pedestrian bridge, over one of the most congested highways in the country, breathing an odiferous medley of carcinogenic fragrances, while repeatedly harangued by scalpers trying to either buy or sell tickets, depending on your proximity to the stadium. OR, you drive on the aforementioned congested highway, through one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of a dangerous city, and pay $15 (no bills larger than $20 accepted) to park. If, like my cousin, you’re bringing your wife, three kids and one weird cousin, you then spend half a month’s rent/mortgage on tickets and food. Your view is blocked by several drunk and belligerent fellows who shout obscenities non-stop for 3 hours in front of your 4-year-old. Security guards search your wife’s duffel bag of baby supplies, and don’t you dare try to save money by bringing in your own beverages.
Now, this is what a baseball game is like in Nashua, New Hampshire, twice rated “Best Place to Live in America” by Money magazine. You cruise into the parking lot of Holman Stadium with no traffic jams to speak of. You find a parking spot easily… and it’s FREE (I’m still feeling vaguely guilty about that, as if I somehow snuck in the service driveway and avoided the fee collectors). You pay a hefty $5 to get in, and that’s not a bleacher seat, that’s reserved. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, it’s an idyllic 74 degrees, there are multiple concession stands, none of which has a line. No one pats you down or searches your bags. There were a couple of city cops “patrolling” the premises, but the only actual work I saw either of them do through the entire course of the game was to help a guy find the bathroom. Children are everywhere; if there’s one thing Granite Staters know how to do, it’s BREED. Many of the children seem unsupervised and run around in little shrieking packs. No one seems concerned that they’ll be snatched off the street. The local mascot runs around acting silly and high-fiving people, while the local cheer leader? (not sure what the correct term is) leads the crowd in a series of inane but oddly amusing games such as spin around in a circle ten times and then try to run across the field (result: half the participants fell on their faces); play air guitar; walk around the field blind-folded trying to locate a $10 bill. The highlight was “Tag the Mascot”, where a scrum of at least 200 children chased the mascot across the outfield like some shrieking horde of miniature Huns. The national anthem was sung by kids from the local Catholic school. It was all so disgustingly wholesome and cute, I felt like the Grinch in Whoville.
There’s always been an aura of jingoism around professional baseball games, and I see it’s only gotten worse. There’s still the obligatory standing and saluting the Stars and Stripes while the national anthem is sung. There are the obligatory admonishments from the announcer to “thank the troops” and “God bless America”. But I must say that naming the local team the “American Defenders” and dressing them in camo, with a big USA splashed across their chests, is going a bit far. Alas, the Defenders failed to defend, losing to the Worcester (for the non-Yankees, that’s pronounced “WUH-stuh”) Tornadoes.
My cousin is a hardcore, obsessive baseball fan (he’d be BFF with Billy Crystal’s character in “City Slickers”). When he discovered I know less about the rules than his 7-year-old daughter, he looked at me with incredulous disgust and asked, in full seriousness, “What do you DO if you don’t watch baseball?” His wife mentioned that she’d like to get Netflix, but there’s really no point, since there’s a 3-hour baseball game on TV almost every day. Their kids are being indoctrinated in the Church of the Mets almost as seriously as they are in the other kind of Church (see finding jesus in greenland for more on that). The 4-year-old has already had baseball lessons with a pro minor league pitcher. Despite all of this, *I* am somehow perceived as the oddball and receive the obligatory razzing for my political beliefs, which somehow seem to be conflated with survivalism, not quite sure why. “Is your new house going to have an arsenal? We won’t bring the kids over if it’s TOO big.” (I assured them it will be buried.) “Gonna have a 2-year supply of freeze-dried food on hand?” (I demurely declined to answer that one.)
There were fireworks after the game, but oddly, two of my cousin’s three kids are terrified of them. “We’re raising seriously neurotic children” his wife commented. So they took off early and missed out on the colorful and noisy glorification of war, replete with soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” and some odious country song that I think was called “Fight for Freedom”. In true Live Free or Die fashion, the stadium lights weren’t turned back on afterwards, meaning everyone had to make their way down lethal concrete steps in darkness.
Total game day attendance: 2245. Similarity to the movie “Bull Durham“: strong (alas, neither Kevin Costner nor Tim Robbins showed up to vie for my attention). Junk food consumed: Italian sausage heaped with grilled peppers and onions, served up by “the Sausage King of Nashua”; fried dough (flung by baby, powdered sugar everywhere). Cute kid proximity alert: Code Red.
At least I didn’t have to listen to “Proud to be an American”.