Baseball Homesickness

I was driving home today over the dark roads while the sleet kept on coming down, my iPod merrily shuffling songs, and all of a sudden one of my favorites came on, a mass choir singing a gospel tune. Though I am quite emphatically not religious, I love a great big, clapping, shouting, swaying gospel choir and a rolling piano. It lifts my spirits; it makes me smile. My favorite of my gospel choir songs came on as I was driving home, and listening to it, suddenly I could feel sunshine. Not in the Jesus-loves-me way; I just felt warm and happy, listening to the music.

For whatever reason, the song and my uplifted feeling started me thinking about the Red Sox. I thought of Papi's follow-through and Schilling pumping his fist and roaring in triumph and Varitek slapping the ball back into Keith Foulke's mitt after a save. I thought about Fenway Park and that smell it has, a smell I'll never come up with the right bouquet of words to describe. I thought about Fenway Park right now, under the snow and sleet and ice and mud, thought of it lying dormant there, people trudging by on Lansdowne Street under the Monster. I thought about Bus Day and Ft. Myers and fresh-faced young pitchers kicking the dirt on the mound, trying out for a shot in the big club. I thought about batters stepping in and out of the box. I thought about pitchers nodding at the signal carefully, staring in. I thought about Joe Castiglione saying "The pitch."

And then all of a sudden it hit me like a swift kick in the gut. It just knocked the wind right out of me--baseball homesickness. That's how it felt. Like all the times I've been pining for home while somewhere else. I had smiled, thinking about seats in the bleachers on a warm August night, but now--now it was like a roller coaster had dropped me back down. I felt my stomach plummet as I drove by the frozen river.

The feeling--almost as soon as it came on, it went from pleasant to painful. It hurt. I'll admit right now I just about cried, coming to a crunching stop on the salted road at a stoplight, wishing I'd never thought about baseball at all.

Comments

[Iain]

We're at that "staring out my window and waiting for spring" stage, aren't we? It'll be back with us soon, though.

An iPod question for you: is the shuffle feature just not too much to handle sometimes (you know, when it does a Beethoven-Johnny Cash-gospel choir-Nine Inch Nails sequence)? Just wondering...

[beth]

actually, iain, that's just the kind of fucked up mix of music i enjoy.

[mike_b1]

And then you read the latest Shaughnessy whinefest and realized just what else baseball season means in Boston.

[peter*]

I almost heard the THUNK of your thoughts when they went from one extreme to another! '06 will be special. What we do until the season starts, and how we feel, will be resolved, and in a great way, when the season starts. And I'm willing to go out on this thin fragile limb right now, Feb. 1, 2006. That's where the fun is.

[Boston Fan in Michigan]

Aarrrrgh.

Stop describing Fenway and the baseball season so well. You only make it hurt more. :/