1. We truly love talking about our kids. Obviously.
2. We truly love talking about baseball.
And hey, wow, what a great tie-in. Funny, it's like I almost had it planned that way. Because as you may or may not already know this week is Opening Day across major league baseball.
To be perfectly honest I've completely lost track of how many Rangers' Opening Days I've attended. Best estimate is probably somewhere between the range of fifteen and twenty. It didn't slow down when Maddie came along, not with Norah, and now not with Jack (although he will be missing this year's festivities again due to age limit restrictions imposed by Mom and Dad). So yes, one might say it takes a lot for one of us to miss an Opening Day.
If you need further evidence of this, back in 2009 when we were still all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed fresh from our honeymoon in Belize and right about 2 weeks into being a married couple, Mel and I watched the Rangers play the Indians in the first game of the season while she was suffering from a massive case of vertigo. I'm pretty sure she puked on the way to the ballpark at least once or twice, and then a couple of times there as well. Were it not for the TLC of our favorite usher Fred, who knows how many more times she would have called up Ralph on the big white telephone that day.
As for my own personal experiences of going to Opening Day, they didn't really ramp up until the current ballpark was built. I was not at the first game of the year in 1994, as I spent the second half of that school day at Harwood Junior High trying to squeeze in as much listening to the game as I could with a tiny walkman and some inconspicuous looking earbuds.
(Note: This was 1994 so there was not such a thing as inconspicuous looking earbuds really.)
But without fail, every year saw that excitement plant a seed and begin to grow through spring training and ultimately reach a crescendo on that one particular spring day at the start of a new season. What began as a kid continues on in adulthood.
I assume it will never go away. I hope it will never go away. And truthfully, if one of the biggest joys you get as a parent is to watch your children grow up and succeed at something in life then I would offer to you another is to be able to share the love of the great game and the beginning of a new season with your kids. To be able to look in their eyes and see that excitement that you know is genuine because for the first time in 6 long months, you get to go the ballpark to watch a baseball game: That's an awesome thing.
So let's not beat around the bush or whatever here: Opening Day 2019 will surely be a little more melancholy than some of the others, and I think you all know why. Corporate greed has won out over fan emotions.....maybe not of all fans, but of many.
Sad, but ultimately true (in my opinion).
But I digress. We'll be there this year. And the year after that, in some strange new ballpark we never wanted to see built in the first place. And the year after that.
And for many years to come.
Because after all.
It's what we do.
