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Ah, baseball season is upon us once again. It brings back memories. Fighting through traffic. Bribing a parking attendant half a years salary for a parking spot half the size of my vehicle. Sitting in a half empty ballpark, watching a rich owner buy his way to a World Series. Eating overpriced and under-flavored food cooked by kids who couldn’t get a summer job at McDonalds. Then we sit through hours and hours of a slow and interruption-laden game. Afterwards, we feel unfulfilled and stumble home without even so much as a buzz off the $300 we’ve spent on cheap watered-down beer. Aaaaaah, yes, it’s baseball, the great American pastime.

Fortunately, I remembered the above scenario and chose to forgo a trip to the ballpark. Instead, I sat down in front of my TV and for the first time since the baseball strike years ago, I watched a baseball game. And not just any baseball game, but my home team, the Minnesota Twins. I sat there, forcing myself to try to watch just one game. Hoping against hope that this game would provide me the same fulfillment that a hockey or football game provides.

It seemed like hours had gone by since the first batter left the dugout, and headed towards the plate. I started to wonder if I was developing bed sores. I think my couch has begun decaying. I wondered if my new TV had a half-life and how much longer it now had. Fortunately, these thoughts were interrupted by the first pitch.

And so the game went. I continued to be unfulfilled and felt something was lacking….perhaps it was my pulse….surely this game had lasted at least that long. And then something began to bother me. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was…it seemed to be eating away at my sanity. Then came a lull, as the next batter began what appeared to be a Herculean effort to walk to the plate.

However, in that lull I realized what was bothering me. Somewhere off camera there was a child. Surely not unlike any other child. It was probably dirty. It was probably short. It was probably completely oblivious to the fact that it had driven its parents crazy long ago. However, this child was also screaming…also not an uncommon activity for children. However, this child was screaming something…coherent, not quite recognizable but definitely something. And this child was screaming it over and over and over and over. You could barely hear him over the sound of the crowd snoring. But he was just loud enough to irritate the living shit out of you.

Once I heard it I couldn’t block it out. It kept coming and coming. It drove itself into my mind like a splinter. I covered my ears and it continued. That steady and staccato yell, following an tempo eerily similar to the tempo of my heart. It was like the drip of a faucet. In that instant I became a fanatical supporter of justifiable homicide, infanticide, abortion, rugby (if you’ve ever played you know what I mean) or anything else that could possibly have quieted this child.

Truly I was going mad. Where was that remote control?! My kingdom for the remote control!! Might I actually be forced to walk over to the TV and change the channel?!?! Oh, the humanity!!

Finally, I was saved. Approximately 3 nanoseconds before my head exploded, I heard another cry from the crowd. This time it was a man, clearly from another part of the crowd. His voice rang out strong and true, as if from god himself.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP KID!!!!”.

The child stopped….

Over the snore of the crowd, silence prevailed. Outside my window birds began to sing. The trees sprung back to life. Angels from heaven descended and begun to play “Stairway to Heaven”. Truly we were saved by that single brave soul. I almost wanted to buy him a beer…but then I thought “Wait!!…that’s my beer”.

Instead, with almost infinite happiness I found the remote control and turned off the game. I sat back and realized that for the first time, I had (almost) watched a baseball game and was fulfilled.