ShareThisBaseball's exhibition season began last week, notably short one phone call from Denver.
It usually sounded something like this:
Mom: "Gregg?"
Me: "Hi, mom."
Mom: "Well, hot dog! The Rocks are playing again! Can you find a schedule for me?"
Not that it should have been hard for my mother to track down a Colorado Rockies schedule. But for some reason she thought her sportswriter son could expedite the process and put one in her hands, which I would through the magic of the Internet, a printer and the U.S. Postal Service.
Bless her soul, my mom didn't quite make it to opening day a year ago. She died midway through March.
This was certainly my family's loss, but it was also a bad break for the Rockies, the Boston Red Sox, the Angels, the St. Louis Cardinals (her four favorite teams, but she had more), and baseball. Baseball didn't realize its loss, of course, mainly because my mom was just one of millions and millions of fans just like her.
Undaunted. Forgiving. Totally smitten.
Baseball can sully itself with steroids, jack up prices and even end its postseason games after midnight for half the country's loyal fans. But somehow it can't rid itself of its dedicated followers.
It even picks up more than it loses.
Attendance has been at record highs the past two seasons, more than 79 million in 2007, its best mark ever, and more than 78 million in 2008, despite the retreating economy.
We all know people who have given up on baseball. The strike in 1994 was damaging, and not everyone came back in '95 just because Cal Ripken Jr. showed up every day.
The game loses fans every time a favorite player becomes a free agent and leaves town. It loses followers as $6 tickets become $12 tickets, then $18 tickets. It has lost fans that were disgusted by cocaine, then steroids, and now HGH busts.
Luckily for Bud Selig's owners and Don Fehr's players, no matter how much those entrusted custodians of the sport bungle their way through, routinely doing things that should separate baseball fans from the game they love, the faithful hang in there.
Call fans naïve. Call them blind.
Or maybe just call them stubborn -- refusing to let the idiots and the idiocies ruin it for them.
My mom was never happy about rising ticket prices, but when she did go to games in her later years, she just accepted sitting farther and farther from home plate.
She mourned each time as Andres Galarraga and Vinny Castilla and Juan Pierre left Colorado, but she also welcomed Troy Tulowitzki, dubbing him "Two Whiskeys" to solidify their new relationship.
She didn't ask me about steroids.
The vast majority of baseball fans find their way past the obstructions. They go to the heart of the game, the one on the field.
They love that every day is a fresh start. They love the drama of simple equations. A 3-2 pitch. A 6-4-3 double play. That their favorite team might win 90 games and make the postseason.
Players come and go. Baseball evils evolve. But some things don't change.
Every day, there are nine innings to be played. Luckily for those who make baseball their business, that's enough for those who make it their passion.
(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton@PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
