As I prepare for a trip to slumber land, I keep thinking of a brief conversation Sean and I had tonight about sports. Specifically the use of turf vs real grass on a sports playing field. He told me (as I’m new to all this sporting stuff) that turf isn’t so much used in football anymore, but you still see it in baseball. That knowledge horrifies me.
I’ve only recently (in the past year and a half) become a baseball fan. More specifically, I am a Yankees fan, but I’m not looking to stir up trouble. At any rate, in this short period of time, I’ve developed a love of the sport that is rivaled only by my love of my family and the Macintosh operating system. This is serious business. I am a baseball purist. I am devoutly against the idea of instant replay in baseball. I think people like Alex Rodriguez, as great as he can be, makes a mockery of the sport with an “I love my fans” attitude, followed quickly by an outstretched palm for more money. I think some of the greatest heros history has to offer can be found on baseball cards. The sport has so many stories of love, passion, life, loss, redemption, hope, and drama. For me, baseball is the only sport that captures all of that so eloquently.
So, that said, I repeat my horror of turf on a baseball field. Baseball is, to me, a sport of honesty, of purity, of goodness. There is something about the sight of the pattern mown into the outfield, the way the ball appears bright in that sea of lush green, the way diving for a pop fly to deep left makes those great green stains on a player’s uniform. These are integral parts of the game – intertwined in the experience as much as hot dogs, cold beer, the 7th inning stretch…and some clubs have the audacity to sully it all by using astroturf? That is sacrelige.
This post is not topical. It’s not seasonal. But it’s heartfelt. Baseball to me is not a sport about who can make the most money, or if this player or that player is cheating on his wife. Baseball is life and nature, and pure simplicity. And you just can’t fake it with plastic grass.
