For Love of the Game

Watching Kevin Costner's movie For Love of the Game, a baseball movie, of course, after having just watched my Reds get drubbed by the Cardinals. Baseball. There's a thousand lines from a thousand movies I could quote that would, in some way, describe how I feel about the game. And yet none would come quite close enough to really getting it right. Costner's pretty good at it, even if he's a little cheesy sometimes. But he's led two of the great baseball movies of all times (if you're a baseball fan, you'll know which ones -- if you're not, I'm not telling you cause you won't care anyway) so he must have some handle on it.

Baseball truly is America's pastime, and despite the surge of popularity over the years of other sports, continues to reach new attendance heights year after year. And whatever popularity it has lost over the years is professional baseball's own fault. You gotta save two weeks salary to buy a pack of baseball cards anymore, and you have to have a second mortgage on your home if you want to buy any piece of MLB merchandise. But, as long as I don't eat at the stadium, I can still take my family to a Reds game in Cincinnati, four tickets, gas and parking for less than $100.

Of course, most people around here like to go to Indianapolis Indians game, and while I admit Victory Field is an awesome minor league park, I can't for the life of me see why anyone would want to watch the Triple A Pirates. I don't even want to watch the Pirates major league club, let alone their minor league scrubs. But I digress.

Still, I can watch a major league baseball game in Cincinnati for just a few bucks more than it costs to watch the Indians play here, and get a nice view of the river to boot. Plus, I took my mom once to a game there, and she said, quote, "Look at that bilge there going up the river." She meant "barge" presumably. So, there's that.

Steroids. That's a topic for another post to come soon. But let's just say that the whole steroid flap proves little else than the hypocrasy of the baseball brass, and worse, the baseball fan. Baseball didn't care until it got caught, and neither did the fan. Now the fan wants to act self-righteous, and the bosses want us to believe they tried to clean up the game all along. Pitiful.

What's your favorite line? Here's a few of mine. I'll let you figure out the movie.

"Dad? Wanna have a catch?"
"There's no crying in baseball!"
"You play baseball like a GIRL!"
"Throw him the heater, Ricky!"
"It's supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great."
"I'm done. For love of the game."

In the end, watching or listening to the Cincinnati Reds has been the backdrop for most of my life. And the soundtrack of most of the time I've spent with my wife and family over the years involves the sounds of the game. But I just can't think of anything better in the whole world than sitting in a seat, with some peanuts, and my family on each side of me. Somebody on the Reds hits one deep, and we all high-five each other as the fireworks go off overhead. "This one belongs to the Reds." All while the fireworks and the moon twinkles off the ripples of the Ohio river.

Oh yeah, and a "bilge" is floating by.