A few reasons why baseball is awesome

So baseball has finally come back to Beantown. The Red Sox are at Fenway, and all is right with the world. As a poet said, it will repair our losses and be a blessing to us. We will have wall-ball doubles and obstructed views and hot dogs that would taste terrible if you ate them anywhere else. Thus the home opener always induces in me a spirit of thanksgiving, reminding me just how much I love baseball.

I love serendipity tickets. With roughly 3 million tickets to Fenway on the market every year, there’s always a couple that need a good, last-minute home, and I am always happy to take them in.

I love booing. In modern American life, we’re expected to be happy all the time, or at least, nonconfrontational. If you’re at a work meeting, you can’t stand up and yell, “You’re a bunch of bums!” (Although it might make the meeting more interesting.) But at the ballpark, one can boo, and boo lustily. I love this about baseball.

I love rookies. I love that every year, there is a new crop of cocky, unspoiled youngsters who only have a mild idea what they’re doing, and that every year, a handful of them leave us slack-jawed in amazement.

I love 10-pitch at-bats when you’ve got a real boxing match going back and forth between pitcher and batter. The batter is fouling ’em off, and the pitcher is mixing it up. And they’re going back and forth until suddenly you’re either watching a bases-clearing line drive or a vicious backdoor slider for a called strike three.

I love baseball fights. I love bench-clearing brawls when the relievers sprint in from the bullpen. I love how the players all sort of mill around trying to look tough. And I love a good manager-umpire fight, when the manager is kicking the dirt and throwing his hat, and suddenly the umpire rears back and ejects him. Only in baseball do you see old men argue this way.

I love the uniforms. A baseball uniform is a quirky thing — grown men are expected to wear stirrups, tapered stretch pants, something that looks like a pajama top, a belt, cleats and a cap. And yet somehow, together, it works.

I love breaking balls. Yes, fastballs are all macho and badass, especially when they’re mid-to-high 90s with late life. But a well-executed breaking pitch — like the aforementioned backdoor slider or a knee-buckling curveball — is a thing of skill and beauty.

I love baseball on the radio. Some people only fully relax when they hear Mozart, or the ocean or an “Om.” For me, baseball on the radio is like all of these put together, but with beer added.

But mostly, what I love about baseball is that a day with baseball is always — always — better than a day without it.