Baseball and Power Exchange

I have a long history with the great American pastime -- baseball...  For those of our readers who do not enjoy the game, or understand the game, I apologize.  This piece will be some combination of personal history and walk down memory lane and meditation on the conjunction of my power exchange relationship and that selfsame game -- baseball.

Baseball is, probably, in my genes.  My father played minor league baseball in the years before World War II.  He was a catcher, and I well remember that in his waning years he blamed his baseball years for some of the struggles he had with rheumatoid arthritis.  Still, for all of that, my father's love of baseball came down to me.  I learned it at his knee, practically as I learned to walk and talk. 

As I grew up, totally in love with my Daddy, baseball was just part of the vocabulary that he and I shared.  I was the oldest child in my family.  Not one of the three younger brothers was ever interested in the game, and so my Dad lavished his love of the sport on the only one of his children who cared; who shared his fascination with the game.

I remember being in elementary school.  We were gifted with a marvelous new technology -- the portable transistor radio.  Every fall, as the World Series of baseball would come around, I'd gather on the playground at recess with great circles of my classmates.  We'd listen intently to those tiny wonders that allowed us to listen to the games for those precious snatches of time, and be whisked away to wherever the boys of summer were battling it out.  We were, of course, never allowed to listen to those little magical boxes during school time, but the playground was a free zone and the radios were such a link to a world that enchanted us for a space each fall.

During all those same school years, the springtime brought gifts of free baseball tickets for students who maintained "A" averages.  Each spring, my pair of free tickets allowed me to go off to a Denver Bears baseball game with my Dad.  We'd sit in the ballpark, and he'd explain to me about strikes and fouls, and double plays, and fly balls, and earned run averages, and batting averages, and all the arcane bits and pieces of baseball as religion. 

My one (yes, ONE) high school crush was on a handsome, lanky, sharp faced baseball player.  His name was Mike Evans, and I was head over heels in love with the boy.  He never knew I was alive.  I went, faithfully, to every single game through all the last three years of my high school career.  Sitting in the hot sun on Saturday afternoons, watching the beautiful boy play ball.  I got sunburnt, week after week, all for naught.  I was rejected by the guy I thought I loved, but never the game.  The game remained as pure and unsullied as it ever was; even in the face of unrequited love.

When I grew to adulthood, I hoped to pass on my love of baseball to my children.  Our young family was always struggling to make ends meet, but we could purchase tickets to watch the renamed Denver Zephyrs baseball team for $2.00 per seat.  A bag of peanuts cost us another dollar.  It was inexpensive entertainment, and so another generation of the family was indoctrinated into the esoteric world of baseball.

When I look back over all of that long, long association with the sport, it seems somehow prophetic to me.  My life now revolves, from May to October each year, around the Cincinnati Reds.  Unlike football, which is a weekend occupation, baseball perfuses through the entire season.  They play 162 games, and there is rarely a night when there is not a game.  From opening day until the last game of the World Series, He watches baseball.  We don't go out, we don't make plans, we don't schedule social engagements without first considering the baseball schedule.  He loves football, but baseball becomes the obsession -- win or lose, the game enthralls Him, captures Him ... and so, by extension, captures me. 

I watch baseball with Him.  I talk baseball with Him.  I listen to Him rant when they lose, and I join Him in the giddy, hopeful, almost mystical fervor of rejoicing when they win.  Early in my association with Master, I sometimes fussed about how much time baseball took up in our world.  Quietly... However, as our time has gone on together, I've come to understand that I spent a lifetime preparing to share His love of the game.  Is there a power exchange component to the absolutely insistent committment to watching every single game; to my acquiescence to that routine and regimen?  Perhaps.  It doesn't feel onerous to me.  Does bowing to the power dynamic require that it feel difficult?  I don't think so.  Would I watch every game left to my own devices?  Probably not.  I love the game, but I'm not that intent about it.  On the other hand, my watching it with Him makes Him happy and that seems just fine to me.

swan