Baseball

My Uncle Chet always wore an Atlanta Braves hat, though I didn't know why. All he ever watched were Yankees games, just like Pop Pop. The only time I saw the Atlanta Braves, the only reason I knew who they were and what they looked like, was the 1996 World Series.

The games I didn't see at Grandma's house were on at mine, my father yelling from the living room recliner, "Come on, what are you swinging at?"

Up to this point, baseball was only something that distracted my father's attention.

"What teams are playing?" I asked, only wanting to hear the team name and not just their city, like the way Pop Pop and Uncle Chet communicated about teams. Where they came from wasn't important, it was the team name that mattered, what they represented. Were they the Los Angelas Angels of Anahiem or just the White Sox? Who was afraid of a white pair of socks anyway.

If my father answered Orioles, they were my favorite team, if he said Indians, I loved the Indians. Rooting against my fathers team gave me some reason to watch it. Baseball wasn't the fastest or most exciting game to watch, it was slower, and required patience to get to the good stuff. When I ended up seeing the occasional walk-off home run, or dugout clearing brawl, I knee why they watched baseball--it was awesome.

The next step was a team, and after 'liking' every team in the Ameican Leage and a few in the National, the choice was made easy, the 1996 Series changed everything. The Yankees were my team, and I began to understand baseball for what it was: a sport, a battlefield, and a conversation piece. People got mad, players got mad. Baseball flew and fan argued. Pop Pop and Uncle Chet talked about it all the time, occasionally referring to some players as "dummys."