Fifty-three days until pitchers and catchers … and here’s your daily splash of joy.
Why do you love baseball?
Brilliant Reader Jim: “After tuck-in and during the season, he falls asleep listening to baseball on the radio — a practice borrowed from days of old; a tradition passed from father to son, made possible only by the magic of baseball.”
Brilliant Reader Matt: "A little roller up along first, behind the bag ..." (BTW, this is the moment thousands of Mets fans sold their souls and the bill has yet to come due...)
Brilliant Reader Mike: “That first flash of green you see when you get to the stadium. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, I’m 9 years old again and at Comiskey Park to watch the Fox-Aparicio-Minoso Sox play the Berra-Mantle-Ford Yankees.”
Brilliant Reader Dirk: My grandfather took me to my first game (Whitey Ford pitching against the Angels). My grandfather took my mother and me to a Mets Banner Day doubleheader in 1969.
Joe: I miss Banner Days. I miss Bat Days. I miss Ball Days. I miss Sunday doubleheaders. I understand why they’re gone. But I’m old and nostalgic and, alas, wish we lived in a world where they weren’t.
I especially miss doubleheaders. My father, being a proud immigrant who wanted nothing more than to raise his kids as true Americans, learned baseball for that purpose. But he is also a frugal man — someone who will happily buy day-old bagels at a discount because, to him, they’re basically as good — and so he LOVED doubleheaders. Two games for the price of one? Are you KIDDING ME?
So I spent my childhood going to Sunday doubleheaders at massive, almost-empty Cleveland Municipal Stadium. It was glorious; by the end, there were 11 people left, and my clothes smelled like cheap beer, and we all knew each other by name, and Duane Kuiper’s jersey was covered in dirt because he had spent the afternoon diving for every ground ball under the sun.
“You ready to go?” Dad would ask, but he knew the answer. I was never ready to go, even if the Tribe trailed 9-2, and the original Mike Stanton had come into mop-up, and the free windbreaker I had gotten as the giveaway already had a hole in it. He couldn’t even say that we needed to beat the traffic.
If you would like to send in the reason why you love baseball, we’d love to hear it. And in that spirit, we’re also now collecting photos and artwork too — old snapshots, ballpark scenes, favorite scorecards, kids’ drawings, ticket stubs, whatever captures the joy of the game for you. Some people are sending song lyrics. Some are sending poems. It’s utterly wonderful. Just send along your baseball joy to [email protected].
ONE MORE THING! On the PosCast this week, Molly Knight and I announced that we will have a new podcast in 2026 called The Joy of Baseball — partially inspired by this series — and we have some really fun plans for it. We’ll keep you updated. A lot of stuff is coming in 2026.
