54 outs, however long it takes

"...they'll watch the game. It'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters."

There’s something to be said for the excruciating minutiae of subculture membership, and now thanks to Social Media™, for better or worse, we have more subcultures than ever. But there’s also something to be said for megaculture. One finds a certain comfort in the fact of a Big Mac being a Big Mac at every McDonald’s location across the land, whether you enter the Golden Arches in a field of amber waves of grain or atop a purple mountain majesty.

“Every time we go on a trip, we stop at Mickey D’s ’bout 10 for coffee, orange juice, and some fries, right Mom?” my late uncle once asked my grandma as we drove across New Mexico together in a white Honda Odyssey.

“What?” she responded while trying ineffectually to turn down the air conditioner intensity using the spanking-new touchscreen. (The year: 2006. Heady times for vehicle tech.) My grandpa was driving with hands at 10 and 2 and daren’t interfere with his copilot’s duties, though he probably couldn’t hear the kerfuffle anyway.

“Every time we go on a trip, we stop at Mickey D’s ’bout 10 for coffee, orange juice, and some fries, right Mom?” Uncle Randy tried again.

“WHAT?” she shouted even louder now that the air conditioner was on full blast.

“Every time we go on a trip, we stop at Mickey D’s ’bout 10 for coffee, orange juice, and some fries, right Mom?” my uncle implored, louder still. (He was used to repeating himself as his speech was affected by his disability; still, his dogged commitment to getting this particular truth confirmed was commendable.) I squeezed my newlywed husband’s hand, knowing instinctively we both had memorized the phrase.

“What?” my harried grandmother asked a final time, blessedly having located the proper air conditioner setting.

“Every time we go on a trip, we stop at Mickey D’s…”

“What’s Mickey D’s?” she asked tartly.

Well, anyway. What I’m saying is that sometimes megaculture can save you.

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It’s been a particularly trying few weeks for my family, both immediate and extended, and I have self-soothed with America’s original megacultural pastime: baseball. Plenty has been said about the commercialization of and money in baseball by people far more qualified than me, and of course, there are subcultures of fandom, but that’s not what interests me now.¹

It’s the continuity, the sameness, day after day for 162+ games a season, that makes baseball such a comforting companion in times of turmoil. Nine innings, three outs a side, and every pitch is a display of incredible human ability. When a hit does happen, well, that’s a display of incredible human ability, too. Plus, hits provide little interludes of just the right amount of excitement for a few moments, then you can settle in again for another swig of your cold beverage, another snack.²

When we visited DC a few years ago, we caught a Nationals game.

I grew up a Dodgers fan, playing ball in the backyard with my dad and brother in Los Angeles. Then I became a Sox fan after moving to Chicago. Even as a teenager, I went to my brother’s little league games just for fun. Well, and for the possibility of seeing my mom get thrown out for fighting with another parent. (That only happened once, and she was confronting another parent who was heckling the kids, but still.) As fate would have it, my husband’s hometown hosted the White Sox single-A farm team, so after he met me, he easily slotted into White Sox fandom.

Paul Konerko, when the Sox came to play our farm team in an exhibition game. Some deep, primal instinct made me shout out “Hey-oh Paulie!!” from this short distance; to his credit, he glanced my way and nodded.

Noah grew up playing ball. His mom’s brother Quin played on a Mississippi state high school championship team, and her other brother, Jeff, a card collector, gifted Noah a signed Derek Jeter rookie card back in the day—which I bet he regrets, no matter how much he loves Noah.

Uncle Quin creeping down the third-base line

One of his dad’s brothers played in the pros: he was a shortstop for the Giants from ’68-’70, gaining the distinction of hitting a home run in the big leagues and playing on the same team as Willie Mays.

Check out that jawline! Classic Etheridge.

A snippet of Jimmy’s obituary.

Noah’s uncle Jimmy was a gifted athlete all around but was apparently an exceptional baseball player. Everyone believes he would’ve gone pro, too, but he tragically died in a high school football accident.

Baseball is the background music in both our families.

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So like I said, things have been tough, and we’ve been watching a lot of baseball. I can count on baseball: its rhythms and rules. Noah sorts through baseball cards—he and his older brother and my brother have gotten back into collecting and selling them—while Steve Stone and Jason Benetti³ banter in the background. They feel like friends. Talk of RISP, DICE and WHIP occasionally comes up, but mostly the announcers just talk about what’s happening on the field, and the old days when Stoney was a pitcher, stuff any Joey Bagodonuts like me can keep up with.

It’s easy to look at the guys on the field, all in the same uniform, and imagine them appearing mystically from a cornfield, uncomplicated but individual. Sometimes I see their faces and see the little boys they used to be. (I’m a mother; I can’t help it.) I don’t think about the youth baseball subculture, though. That might ruin the effect. I just think of The Sandlot.

For a couple of hours, it’s just me and them. A ball is thrown 60 feet 6 inches, over and over. They need me to watch, and I need them to play. That’s how this whole thing works.

1. Though I enjoyed Moneyball—both book and movie—very much.

2. There’s only so much gamesmanship one can do (legally: I’m looking at you, ASTROS). There’s no pretending to be injured, rolling on the turf; there’s no amount of fouling, or time-outing, or slow-walking that can change the game. The pitcher has to pitch. The batter has to face him. The game won’t end until the 9 innings are over or, beyond that, one of the teams leads by at least 1.

3. Benetti, incidentally, has cerebral palsy