A season that’s ending in an lifeless buzz
Living through this pandemic has taught me many things about myself, not the least of which is that I don’t mind spending oodles of time alone in my house.
Sometimes I like to avoid people, and these past seven months have given me a good excuse to.
I eat my own food 95% of the time, so the shutdown didn’t deprive me of going out to eat. Even the loosened restrictions haven’t changed my habits.
When the baseball season was shut down before the end of spring training, however, I cursed the pandemic. Baseball season is a significant reason why I love spring and summer, and being without baseball was going to be rough. But I knew it was wise for Major League Baseball to pack it in.
Then it was announced that an abbreviated season would be rolled out. A baseball season that starts in July? Absurd. Instead of being happy for any kind of season, I was troubled.
Putting all those players in jeopardy was based purely on greed.
But I still intended to tune in. I love baseball. Love. I hang my Jolly Roger flag from an upstairs window on opening day and take it down on the last day. I usually listen to the games on the radio, cheering in my kitchen when the Pirates empty loaded bases with a double, wailing when the bullpen sacrifices the lead the starter left the game with. My neighbors can hear me.
So how strange it was that, once the season started, I forgot to tune in most of the time. And when I did remember, I didn’t hang on every play. I listened to the fake crowd noise and tried to pretend it was real. The few times I went upstairs to watch on TV,
the games felt as empty as the stands were. The experience was antiseptic. It was still baseball being played, but the emotion was gone.
Every year, when the postseason starts and the Pirates pack up and go home, I watch the playoffs, no matter who is playing. It’s great baseball, and the fans’ excitement is heightened and contagious.
Now that the 2020 postseason is winding down, unwatched by me, I have come to realize that what I love about baseball as much as the game is its relationship to fans and their passion.
No game in my lifetime has resonated with this realization than what Bucco fans refer to as “the Cueto game,” Oct. 1, 2013. The reference is to pitcher Johnny Cueto, whose name the fans chanted in singsong throughout the 3⅓ innings he pitched for the Cincinnati Reds.
It was the Pirates’ first postseason appearance since 1992, a magical wild card game in which the good guys prevailed and advanced to the National League Division Series.
I was among that thunderous crowd, roaring en masse and mostly standing, from the pregame announcements, when we even cheered for the trainers, to the last triumphant out.
I came home hoarse, with a crushing headache, but exhilarated. I had been part of a family of more than 50,000 fans bunched together, all of whom felt they were part of that game and maybe even played a role in its outcome.
That experience — and now this anemic short season — has shown me clearly that the game of baseball is only complete when fans are together in the shared excitement when there is excitement and a shared experience of abiding through long, uneventful innings.
Real crowd noise is reactive — a low buzz most of the time, with some loudmouths shouting encouragement occasionally and the sharp spike of volume for a triple, stolen base or walk- off home run.
The game in isolation is just a demonstration of how to play it.
This pandemic season will have its winners in the end, for whatever it’s worth. It will have been a season with a historic asterisk beside it.
Forbes magazine estimated that baseball owners will have lost $ 1 billion this season, and their decision to put their players at risk was surely driven by the desire for whatever TV ad revenue they could salvage.
It was a callous decision that could have been disastrous for the health of more players.
But having sports return has been good for many among us who long for the good old days of eight months ago when we walked around oblivious that we were headed into the most bizarre year of our lives.
I am happy for people who have enjoyed watching sports without fans in the seats. I wish I could have enjoyed this baseball season, the Pirates’ performance notwithstanding. But now I know that baseball is more than simply the game I love.
It is the game I love with my fellow fans. Even if I’m listening at home in the kitchen, I feel the passion in the real fan noise and feel part of it.
So I guess I do love people and want to be around them.
Here’s to 2021, or to put it in baseball terms: Maybe next year!