“It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball…”

Why do I love baseball? Though it’s a simple question, not exactly a curveball, the answer is incredibly layered and intricate. A love of the game is naturally felt but it can be incredibly hard to capture accurately in words.

There’s just something about baseball. The tradition. The unwritten rules. The crack of the bat. The smell of the grass. The warmth of the sunshine. The 6-4-3 double play. The 12-6 curve. The superstitions. The announcers. The nuances of the different ballparks. Hot dogs and warm beer. The fact that you can enjoy it just listening to it. The childhood dreams played out in backyards and ball fields across the land.

Sometimes I think people won’t really understand unless they played the game. Baseball’s just different. I’m old enough to remember how a new baseball season sent a charge through my household. My mother, a huge baseball fan, would help me count down the days until the first Phillies game would be on television.

When I was eleven years old I was convinced I was going to pitch for the Phillies one day. I spent hours and days in my back yard pitching for them against hated rivals like the Mets and Braves. My rusty pitch-back withstanding the thunder of my fastballs as I struck out batter after batter. When I was young, I dreamt I was untouchable…

Is it nostalgia that returns us to the game we first loved? As I grew life became more, ahem, challenging. As it often does. Yet, baseball in all it’s beautiful simplicity was always there. Always reminding me of the warm summer days when I had a radio and a worn out mitt and lightening bugs and a porch swing and the voice of Harry Kalas and Richie Asburn.

It was idyllic, really. A humble slice of Americana that seems to have disappeared in a new world of social media and instant gratification. I don’t just miss it. I love it. I need to recall it. It calms me. It soothes and reminds me of easier times filled with dreams. Even if your team loses, even if there is heartbreak, there is the promise of tomorrow. A new day, a clean slate, a whole new ballgame.

I had been drifting from the game in the last few years. However I was fortunate enough to spend an amazing weekend last October in Cooperstown, NY. Visiting the Hall of Fame on a crisp autumn day and diving headfirst into a community that lives and breathes the game felt good. It felt right. I was reminded of the history and charm of the game. I was reenergized. My love rekindled. The memories flooded back and I felt safe and sure of myself for the first time in a long time.

Whether you are in the bleachers at a high school on a warm spring day, cheering on your kid’s team or casually flip by a pro game on TV, the charm and allure is palatable. The romance, the sense of hope, the calm and the memories come flooding back every time. It’s always like coming home. Safe and pure.

The ones who run the modern game may try and change the game. They may try to “speed up” play to appeal to a new generation. It’s inevitable and that’s ok. Baseball has changed greatly throughout history and yet it’s always been the same. If you love the game the game will always be there for you. Whatever solace you find in the warm memories and wide open spaces for dreams of summers past will always be there. Always.

Imperfect. Perfectly imperfect. I like that.

Where is MySpace???

History lesson for all you hip youngens…

Let Grandpa tell you a story about the long forgotten dark days of yesteryear or something…

Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the Year of Our Lord, 2006 AD, there was this social media site called MySpace.

Now, at the time, it didn’t know it was a social media site. There were no Facebook (I think), no Instagram (I’m relatively sure) and no TikTok (I have zero idea what that is). With nothing to compare it to (let’s just say), this “MySpace” was THE place to be.

Your parents could put pictures on line (thank you, Mr. Gore), they could “like” bands (like the Glen Miller Band or any embarrassing-to-their-kids band you can think of) and movie stars. Most importantly they could blog. Mind you, we use to do all this while walking uphill in the snow while battling velociraptors and laying down track on this newfangled coal-fueled cross country steam train shenanigans… But we were social. Demented and sad, but social.

Anyhoo, back in the Deep Real Estate Bubble Burst of the mid-2000s I use to fancy myself an indie film maker. I use to make “talkies” with my fellow filmmaker friends. I would write the scripts, produce, direct and sometimes shoot my own movies. I put my blood, sweat and tears into each and every one.

They were mildly terrible. But I didn’t (don’t) care.

But the point of the story, and I do have one, is that I would blog about my behind the scenes experiences on my MySpace page. I really enjoyed sharing my comical happenstances with the tens of people who followed me.

Flash forward to this past week when it was suggests to me by a VERY good friend that I should start blogging again.

So I dusted off and opened my old WordPress app and tried to log on. Seven wrong passwords later, I was in. This made my brain drift back to the days of yore. Excited by the power of literally nothing tangible, I looked for a true dinosaur… To my surprise, MySpace still exists. I frantically logged on and was thrilled to discover MY space still existed!!!

And it was completely empty. All of my pictures, videos, blogs, likes, memories and woefully-dated musings were gone. Wiped away forever in the multiverse of corporate takeovers and updated servers.

The odd thing was that all of my “friends” were still there, listed on my page. All of the faces and names that meant something to me in 2007 were there smiling back at me. I quickly went to each and every page to see what was “new”. Who changed jobs? Who became rich and shameless?

Each and every page was blank.

Everything was empty, cold, abandoned… No hope to track these folks down. We never exchanged digits. We never exchanged personal email addresses. Why would we? We were living in a quasi-modern world where people never actually MET…

That would be way too cringy…

Young padawans, listen to Old Man Argyle. Ok, well PRETEND to listen…

Every once in awhile put the iPhone down, go out IRL and meet people. Laugh, learn, live. Really live.

Fill YourSpace with really real faces as often as possible. It’s a scene, man.

Living socially online is awesome. It’s fun certainly and educational for sure. But mix in some honest, old fashioned face time (not FaceTime) with your peers. Those memories will live forever in your personal hard drive.

Until next time, go meet each other IRL.

Bloog!