The Beautiful Game

No, not soccer. (Boy, do you have the wrong blog.) I'm talking about what Babe Ruth called "the only real game, I think, in the world." Baseball.

Looking back over the 50 or so years that I have been a fan, I guess I thought that baseball had already afforded me just about every kind of pleasure and excitement the game offers. But this season, baseball has given me a new reason to love it. My kids have finally become fans -- baseball fans in general and Texas Rangers fans specifically. (It doesn't hurt that the Rangers are playing very, very well.)

And they're  not just the "go-to-a-game-and-buy-a-cap" kind of fan. I'm talking about the "memorize-batting-averages-and check-the-box-scores-daily" kind of fan. In fact, it's even better than that: My daughters are now the "score-the-game" kind of fan. They will sit, score sheet and pencil in hand, diligently recording 6-4-3s and F7s and HBPs -- maybe even an occasional CI or IFR. (Okay, I had to look up the notation for those last two myself.) The point is that scoring makes you pay attention to the game, and paying attention to the game is what will make you love the game. Very seldom do my girls have to record a play with Phil Rizzuto's famous WW (wasn't watching).

Maybe baseball isn't "the only real game in the world" (I say maybe because I'm a little nervous disagreeing with the Babe). But, more than any other, it's still the game that fathers play with their kids. It is supremely the game that ties American generations together. (Watch Field of Dreams if you don't know what I mean.) And this season, to my delight, it's tying two Woodward generations even closer together.

Now if only I could get my 10-year-old son to quit rooting for Tampa Bay....