I’m a lucky bastard.
I love baseball. I live blocks away from a ballpark that routinely holds playoff baseball games. I have a pretty good job that allows me to afford to go to many of these playoff games. Sometimes TBS captures me doing so.
Seeing as St. Louis summers are pretty intolerable without baseball, I also go to a good amount of regular season games in Busch Stadium as well.
Some of you reading this go to more; some less, but I know enough about the presentation of the game that small details don’t escape my attention. Who are the new sponsors on the billboards, have awnings been changed, that guy didn’t have that walk-up song last year did he?
Friday night I was with 3 of my good friends taking in Game 5 of the NLCS. And it kind of struck me- I was having a really great time. Not an OK time or a good time… but a genuinely great time.
It didn’t strike me until about the middle of the fifth why, besides the fact that this was an NLCS game, I was having this much fun. The ladies to my left were dancing (poorly) to the Maroon 5 hit ‘Moves Like Jagger’. The next inning worse moves were broke out for the Black Eyed Peas. And so forth.
In the MLB postseason, the individual clubs aren’t allowed to sell between inning sponsorships (think Ice Mountain Water ‘Question of the Day’ or Clarkson Eyecare ‘You Make The Call’ and similar things in that vein). They’re forced to put a logo on a scoreboard and play songs in between innings. That’s it.
You know what? This is a fan-fucking-tastic way to watch a baseball game. Concentrate on the game while it’s in progress. Hang out, have a few pops with your friends, listen to some music in the periods in between.
Of course, if the people you’re with don’t have AT&T, they’ll probably be checking their phones. But when no service is to be had, you’re forced to just enjoy a baseball game very similar to what happens in Wrigley Field most summer days.
Glorious.
Listen, I’m not sitting here telling the Cardinals not to make as much money as they feel they can. I know it’s not going to be like this all the time. It’s only going to get more intrusive and obnoxious in the coming years.
I get it.
But for those of us lucky bastards that have had the opportunity to go to a couple of post-season games, I can say without a doubt that they’re damn fun. And only part of that is the winning.
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