Baseball is Better

My trip home, to the town where I grew up and where I spent 20 years as an adult, including my formative years in recovery, has made me consider my tendency to see everything in terms of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong.  It’s such an unhealthy way to live and counter to what I learn in The Program. 

I so wanted this place to be different.  When I was away at college and moving several times to further my career I was a fierce advocate for my home town.  I wanted it to change into a place that conformed to my vision of what I thought it could be, of what I wanted it to be, of what I loudly demanded it become.

“How’d that work out for you?” my sponsor would say.

“Just about how it always works out,” I’d reply.

"Good job," he'd say.

Let’s say I love baseball but I live someplace that loves football.  I go to hundreds of football games because that’s the only sport in town.  The experience isn’t awful – I enjoy some parts of the game – but I’m really more of a baseball fan.  I’m in a small minority of people who constantly advocate for a switch to baseball; it's not that we want to banish football or even relegate it to second class status but we do think some variety might be a good idea.  There are fits and starts of interest but the movement never really goes anywhere because the people really like football and don’t care that much for baseball.  After 20 years there are still no baseball teams but dozens of football games every night, played before packed stadiums, full of passionate fans.

What would a smart person do?  Shut up and watch football or move someplace with a lot of baseball teams.  It’s not that difficult.  It’s not a complicated decision.  It doesn’t take an advanced degree to figure this out.

So off I go to a baseball town.  Fair enough.  All well and good.  That's my prerogative.

The problem for me is that I come back and am flummoxed that there aren’t any baseball fans yet.  It’s hardly appropriate for me to bitch about a football fan who lives in a football town.  Football is pretty good.  I just don’t like it.  Baseball isn't that good.  I just like it better.  I don't spend any time thinking about soccer in England or cricket in Pakistan.  What do I care?  I don't live there.  It's none of my business.

But I walked by a GREAT spot for a baseball field downtown today.