It is not much of a secret that I am a baseball fan.
The sport was my first love, and it is one that sort of stays with me every day. Football became the thing I write about most. Oregon football became the rhythm of fall, the road trips, the tailgates, the recruiting boards, the depth charts and the long conversations about what the Ducks are building. But baseball was there first.
Baseball is summer. Baseball is grass and dirt and long shadows. Baseball is the strange comfort of a game that feels like it has no clock and yet somehow always knows when the moment has arrived. Baseball is the sport that can sit quietly for three innings and then suddenly ask you to hold your breath.
I love summer, and I cannot think of a better way to spend a summer evening than at the ballpark. When I was a student at Oregon, my summers were spent as the stadium manager for the Ems. Those nights seemed endless in the best way possible. There was work to do, of course, but there was also a feeling to it. The smell of the park. The sounds of the crowd. The way the lights seemed to hold the evening in place just a little longer than nature intended.
Those were some glorious days.
Maybe that is part of why baseball stays with people. It does not just give us games. It gives us places to return to, even when we have not physically been there in years.
