Thirty-eight days and 15,011 miles before the first day of the fall semester, I embarked with three friends (Owen Witek '13, Craig Thompson '13.5 and Jeff Hetzel '14) on a journey spanning from one coast of the country to the other and more than 30 states – and Canada! – in between. Our goal? To watch one baseball game in each of the 30 Major League Baseball stadiums.
From the conception of the trip – "˜twas a freezing January night when we first hatched the idea – our desire to visit every stadium has been about more than a deep love of baseball. Its roots, of course, were firmly grounded in America's pastime, but the ends we envisioned were focused less on baseball and in greater part on the moments that were not intrinsically related to the sport, but could only occur as a by-product of our trip.
We vowed to be as conscious as possible of the many facets of our journey: to write a blog post after every game; to share our experiences with the people we met; to better understand the geography and people of America; and, above all, to enjoy the company of friends, bound together by a common passion.
The four of us spent 38 straight days together and more than 230 hours on the road. The comfortable confines of our car became cramped and combative at times, for if any four people spend enough time together there will be conflict. However, what emerged from that – our ability to reason with one another and respect, if not always agree with, the feelings of everyone in the car – was far more valuable than consensus or concession.
We discussed important things and inane things alike. We debated for hours if it would be possible to coast on a bike all the way from Denver to Kansas City with the same veracity and conviction as we discussed the objectivity of values and whether government should make important policy decisions with that in mind. And though in both cases we remained split in our opinions, the hours of discussion garnered a better understanding of both the questions being discussed, as well as the different ways in which we conceptualize and think about different issues.
Though on the surface many of our discussions had nothing to do with baseball, the nature of our trip and the tenor of our speech capture the very essence of baseball. Baseball, unlike football and basketball, is not about instant gratification; it is a patient game, concerned more with the passage of play than the final outcome. Baseball is a game with unspecified length, a get-there-when-you-get-there kind of game, while basketball and football scream "Are we there yet?" from the back seat.
In Linda Pastan's poem "Baseball," the narrator is skeptical that baseball has deeper significance than a simple game. "When you tried to tell me baseball was a metaphor for life," she wrote, "I didn't believe you. It's just a way of passing the time, I said. And you said: that's it. Yes."
Ultimately, our trip was nothing more than a way of passing the time. Undoubtedly it was our preferred way of passing the time, but in the end we decided to spend 38 days traveling to all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums instead of going on vacation or making money or simply hanging out.
Life boils down to how you choose to pass the time. And how better a way than in the company of friends, doing the thing you love?
Scoring Summer's Game
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