So, post your fondest baseball memories. Or, if you post something else, you can suck my balls.
Where do I even begin?
- 2003: I go to my first ever game, at Shea Stadium. I am 6 years old and despite the game getting called in the 6th or 7th inning for rain, I have the time of my life.
- 2005/2006: First year of kid pitch in the local little league. I am mainly a catcher (because I was obese), and a certain celebrity director’s son decides to talk shit while he’s at bat. The first time I ever get called in as a reliever a few innings later, my first AB is against that celebrity’s son (whereupon I make him sing sweet chin music). The director tried to get me banned, but I won on Baseball Law. I may have only been 9 years old, but I apparently was born with an innate understanding of Baseball Justice.
- 2007: My little league has its “stadium day” on the day Clemens announces his return to the Yankees.
- Summer 2009: I go to the HOF induction with my dad. We wind up becoming really friendly with Dave Henderson, who was a super nice man. I got to meet a lot of baseball heroes and get a bunch of autographs: Whitey Ford, Fergie Jenkins, Bob Feller, Art Shamsky, and Tom Seaver among others. Whitey, Feller, and Seaver probably the most meaningful non-Hendu ones.
- 2009: about a year and change before he ultimately passed, I watch the entire Yankees WS run with my grandpa (despite being a diehard Mets fan, he loved baseball and NY more than anything).
- 2015: First three months of my freshman year of college, I put two college bookies out of business betting the Mets WS run.
- 2016: Freshman year, I run into ARod on 65th and Madison while I’m smoking a joint with friends. I ask for a picture, forgetting I still had a funky cigarette in my hand, and he goes “watch that thing man, I don’t do drugs.” Without skipping a beat, I go “buddy you told that same lie to Francesa”. He stormed away but I got the picture.
- 2016: My longtime cantor sings the national anthem at a Mets game. Idk if I can share my actual thoughts without getting banned, but imagine 250 upper east side geriatric Jews taking over an entire section along the 3rd base line. Straight outta Seinfeld.
- 2019: I’m required to write a major research paper in my media/film class to graduate college, and I somehow convince my professor to let me write about Mike Piazza’s post-9/11 home run.
- 2021: I meet my favorite radio host of all time, Steve Somers, at a Mets game. He is one of the first voices besides my parents I remember distinctly knowing as a young child. Especially since he had announced his retirement, it meant a lot.
- 2022-2023: I convince my Jurisprudence professor that I can write a killer law review piece/final paper about rulemaking in baseball (through the lens of gambling and sign-stealing “jurisprudence”). He relents, and I ultimately get the A.
- 2023: I discover a “law review journal,” The Green Bag. Published by attorneys equally as obsessed with baseball as I am, they commission bobble heads of SCOTUS justices and then randomly distribute redemption certificates for the same to subscribers. They also issue “Supreme Court Slugger” baseball cards, which I proudly display in my office. (To this end, if you’ve read this far and live in DC—I will pay for a nice dinner if you act as my proxy for redemption and save me a trip to DC… I’m entitled a bobble head!)
Baseball is the purest form of American exceptionalism. Baseball won us WWII—our grenades were manufactured to resemble baseballs in the palm, on the premise that every red-blooded American man learned from his father how to throw a baseball. I *will* be Commissioner one day, G-d willing, and I promise a return to tradition: every rule change after the advent of Interleague Play is an affront to our Creator. (I’d also have suspended Ohtani indefinitely by now). If you hate baseball, you hate America—and I hate you. Simple as!
