Hit By a Pitch

Well, it’s starting again. The fall catalogs have arrived, showing plaid wool skirts that I might’ve worn back when I listened to the Jesus and Mary Chain and big clunky Frye boots. And the sports people are starting to talk about football.

Granted, the local radio guys never really stopped talking about football. I guess that’s what happens when your local baseball team sucks ass, your local basketball team was a big disappointment, and there’s not much else to talk about. I’ve heard more about the Broncos in the last month than I care to hear about, well, ever. (I officially broke up with the Broncos this summer — we’ll get some ice cream and I’ll tell you all about it soon.) But now it’s kind of everywhere. People are talking about Brett Favre and fantasy football and shit, I’m just not ready for that. People, it’s summer! It’s baseball time!

As a flaky person with ADD, I’m always doing shit and thinking about 100 other things. It’s really hard for me to (and this sounds like total new-agey bullshit and for that, I apologize) um, “be in the moment.” But for some reason, I can be in the moment with sports. Totally and completely. It’s kind of like running, you know? When you’re running, you might be listening to your iPod and watching a game with the closed captioning on, but you’re really just running. There’s not a whole lot of room in your head for anything else — or at least that’s how it is for me, because let’s face it, I’m not all that good at running, but I do it because it’s hard.

That’s how it is with me and sports. At any point, the sport that is in season is my favorite sport ever. When it’s summer, I’m watching baseball. I’m not thinking about the upcoming football season, or about what the Nuggets might do (although I do sometimes hope they don’t trade Marcus Camby). Baseball is my boyfriend and I’m not thinking about other sports. Baseball and I spend almost every evening together and I get pissed on Saturdays when that stupid exclusive Fox deal keeps my team away from me. I go to Coors Field at least three or four times a month and drink beer and yell and get in trouble for giving kids water guns that they use to squirt unsuspecting strangers, some of whom aren’t all that cool.

It’s the height of summer right now, and nothing is on my sports mind except baseball. This even is a good summer, if you can believe that. Sure, my Rockies suck, but that’s more than made up for by the fact that my White Sox are in first place. I’m dreaming about a White Sox/Cubs World Series (hoping for it but dreading it, too).

Fall is for sweaters and chili and skinny scarves and football and pumpkins, mornings with fresh coffee setting my lineup and waiting for the 11:00 kickoff. Winter is my crappy fantasy team, a nice porter or stout, and running from the Auraria Campus parking lot to the Pepsi Center because we just missed tipoff and is for football and basketball. Spring is basketball and then baseball.

But summer belongs to baseball alone. I love baseball so much there’s not room for anticipation of what’s to come next. Now, I love watching the tiny Alexei Ramirez hit balls out of the park, listening to Hawk Harrelson talk his magic, riding my bike to Coors Field and getting nachos and a Snake Dog IPA at Blake Street after the game before riding home to the ‘hood (and lately hoping nobody gets shot).

So I guess I’ll just be late for the party. I don’t want to think about Randy Moss just yet. He’ll still be there when I need to put my fantasy team together the night before the NFL season starts. For now, I just want to hang out with Carlos Quentin.

Hey, just as I was writing that, he hit a home run. See? Summer is for baseball.