While sailing the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship Adventure of the Seas, a baseball fan named Mike Walter decided to open up about the influential moment in his life when he became a fan of the New York Mets. At the first stately dinner gathering, everyone around the table introduced themselves and of course their favorite baseball team including Red Sox, Cardinals, Braves and Mike and his Mets. Each night at dinner, and every other moment spent relaxing, the topic of conversation was baseball ….
Thanks to Mike for his submission. We hope you enjoy his baseball story.
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“Annabelle died in the summer of 2008, which just happened to be when I got a new cat. I named her Annabelle Lee. She’s not a lefty as far as I can tell, but she definitely has Annabelle’s spunk.”
Thanks Sue! A great tale from a true baseball fan …
Sorry our Red Sox Nation didn’t make it to the finals, and maybe with Manny we might have. But I think it is a tribute to the organization that it cared enough about the morale of the team that it was willing to give up a man who obviously caused problems so that the remaining players would have peace of mind.
A personal example of that same kind of class follows.
My niece who now lives in San Diego but whose heart is in Red Sox Nation contracted cancer and has had a difficult time. I felt so helpless wanting to do something and not knowing what I could do. I decided to send an email to her passion, the Red Sox team, stating her love for the team and her situation and hoped that perhaps some token might be sent.
A man named Phil immediately responded wishing her well and saying something would be sent. I hoped maybe for a picture. Not only did a picture arrive but also a little packet containing soil from the Fenway Park infield. She was overjoyed.
October has always been the time that she made her trip to Boston to visit her family and share with them the joys of October. Between chemo sessions, the doctor gave permission for her to go back for a few days. She wanted to, even knowing the risks. She is back now. Wish we were in the series….but what about that 8-7 game! Class act all the way.
It’s been stated before, but bears repeating … Baseball is a pastime that bridges generations.
Dads pass the passion on to sons, brothers pretend to be their favorite stars as they play games in the backyard dreaming of a future in “the show” ….. and daughters are born into families where the hometown team acts as a continuum upon which stories are hung.
It is difficult to pinpoint one definitive Baseballism in a person’s life simply because the game can be experienced through the unique perspectives of the various stages of the life.
In this particular case it is sifting through the stories of youth, young adulthood, to business executive .. to reaching the conclusion that the ultimate Baseballism resides in Fatherhood.
We don’t want you to try to limit your submissions to just one all encompassing post .. If you have more than one baseball story to tell, we want you to share them! If you’d like to submit a Baseballism, please visit our Upload page. We look forward to receiving it!
I just completed writing a post about taking my two year-old daughter to her very first major league baseball game. Throughout the course of that day I was taking video and documenting the entire experience for presentation here at Baseballisms.com. The entire purpose of this site is to be a niche, video version of Story Corps, capturing personal anecdotes about baseball for posterity sake. How wonderful I thought, capturing and sharing this video with Baseballisms viewers about my little girl’s first game and ultimately her progression into a lifelong fan of baseball, including my influence on that passion.
As I logged the video and started my initial edits to the segments, I started to have nagging questions in the back of my mind. Should I be putting this out there? Am I supposed to be exposing my little girl online like this? Does this constitute exploiting my daughter for the sake of traffic? My mind started down paths that I just didn’t want to go in this era of transparency on line.
I know that the site doesn’t get huge volumes of traffic yet, and the potential of the video taking off virally would be slight, but I do post all of Baseballisms’ videos on numerous video services and get decent viewer numbers. I have also had comments from strangers appear on our home videos posted on You Tube that have made me consider turning them into “private” postings. I wasn’t sure that I could wholeheartedly convince myself, and my wife, that this was appropriate yet. I have no problem putting myself out there, and love developing an entertainment brand where a community can exchange video experiences, but I just wasn’t sure about inserting my own daughter into the community.
So I decided to seek out people on line who I respect, to hear what opinions they might have, especially @samharrelson and @jimkukral who themselves have had their kids in videos that I have seen. In all cases the response was the same, everyone recognizes my uneasy feeling and understands this dilemma in exposing ourselves and our families in this online video age. It’s a hard decision, but one that ultimately comes down to each individual’s comfort level with exposure outside the previous boundaries of privacy, family and dare I say safety.
Taking all of the input into account, without a single definitive “post the video” .. plus considering any hesitancy probably meant that I shouldn’t post it …. I decided I was not ready to put my daughter’s video post out into the public realm at this time.
I want to emphatically point out that in no way do I have a specific lack of trust for anyone who checks out the Baseballisms.com site, in fact we have started to develop some great online friendships around the community. I’m sure that everyone here already has a sense of my family and how we live our lives. I am more concerned about the spread of a video with a cute, two year old little girl who graciously high-fives anyone who smiles at her .. and what the end result of that might be.
I will continue to twitter and post about what we are doing as a family, going to the park, attending festivals & ballgames ….. and later this summer having another baby! …. but it was simply the video component that held me back.
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