Here at last! The pain, the humiliation, the glory that is baseball

It’s Thursday; I wonder what Jelisa will be writing about today? A look at the calendar tells us … MLB play begins this weekend! So that answers that question.
***
By Jelisa Castrodale
My first swing missed the ball entirely. The second was an equally embarrassing sequel. I stopped to collect myself, taking a deep breath and undoubtedly wishing I knew something other than PG-caliber curse words. I briefly rested the bat on my polyester-clad shoulder before digging both cleats in the dirt and focusing on the faded Rawlings logo on the back of the ball. My final swing was powered by every molecule of my second-grade skeleton, a desperate attempt that left me tangled in my own scrawny limbs.
I missed.
Again.
Before the teenage umpire could even signal the strikeout, the ball wobbled off the tee and dropped weakly to the dust, probably more out of embarrassment than because I’d come close to making contact with it.

“I think your shirt was too heavy,” my dad said, stopping the VCR and ejecting the video that stored this particular bit of elementary school awkwardness. “How else could you strike out at tee ball?” Twenty-plus years have passed since that particular game, which ended with me angrily throwing my batting glove over the outfield fence, a tantrum that took four tries to complete. Over the next few seasons, the team name screenprinted on my jersey changed, but my ability to not suck at baseball didn’t.
You’d think that being so off-the-charts awful would’ve killed my Interest in the game, that pulling a season’s worth of bench splinters out of my ass skin or consistently leading the team in the Dugout Accidents category would’ve put a bag over my Interest’s head, holding it there until my Interest stopped breathing entirely. Instead, the opposite happened.
The worse I was, the more I loved it. The more I loved it, the more interested I became in it, until somewhere between buying my first pack of Topps cards — complete with mouth-lacerating shards of bubble gum — and following an entire season’s worth of Major League standings, I gave my heart to baseball, securing it with 108 double stitches.
I’ve gone through other phases in my life, from an ill-advised flirtation with reggae to an equally poor decision to wear leggings as pants, but baseball has outlasted all of them, enduring longer than a cassette copy of Bob Marley’s Legend or the repeated suggestion that I shouldn’t be allowed to dress myself. For better, for worse, for the terror that was my tenth grade face, baseball has been with me longer than anything other than combination skin and crushing disappointment.
Another major league season finally — FINALLY! — begins this Sunday night, as the defending World Series champion New York Yankees take on my beloved Boston Red Sox, in a game played entirely within CC Sabathia’s oversized pants. For me, 2010 hasn’t truly begun until Red Sox starter Josh Beckett’s first pitch buries itself in the back of Victor Martinez’ glove, and have admittedly been counting the minutes until Opening Day ever since A-Rod brushed the last piece of Championship confetti off his creepy blue lips.
For the next six months, I’ll measure my life in nine inning increments, dropping terms like VORP and WHIP into casual conversation, DVR-ing episodes of Baseball Tonight and wondering how to treat a Tim McCarver overdose. As always, I’ll turn my attention to any game that shows up on Time Warner Cable, regardless of which team names are stamped on the ticket. I love seeing the professionals excel at something I do so poorly, which is probably why I also like watching porn.
Thanks, baseball, for giving me something to look forward to every year. Now who can tell me how to erase a VHS tape?
***
Jelisa Castrodale is a writer and comedian who has learned a lot about life by making a mess of her own. She chronicles her failures at The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy, covers music for London’s BitchBuzz and twitters while she waits at stoplights. Castrodale was featured in the book Twitter Wit and was named one of Mashable’s 10 Funniest Twitterers.
Also by Jelisa Castrodale …