Yesterday I celebrated my 33rd birthday with a family outing to the Tri-City Valley Cats game against the Staten Island Yankees.  Though Cooper wouldn’t let us stay past the 7th inning, it seemed the Cats just didn’t have it last night and lost 5-2.  A funny thing happened to me though while I was sitting at the game with my Grandparents, parents and family.  I took a moment during the game to look at the game of baseball and wondered how many countless families have had similar nights and realized just how important baseball is to this country.

In the course of pondering the importance of baseball, I also wondered why weekend games would start at 7pm.  Sitting at this single A ballpark in Upstate New York, I pondered the future of America’s game and hoped for a better future for the sport with declining popularity.  In an age where we can only give 3 hours a week to football, baseball seems to be taking a back seat.  With overpriced park tickets and late start times for TV, it seems that baseball is focusing more on the immediate and less on its future.

Nothing could be more evident in this than my own life.  I played baseball, I like it for all the reasons I’ve mentioned.  My father, he loves baseball for all the reasons I’ve mentioned and then some.  My grandfather? I think the game, for him, may run through his veins.  It’ll be interesting to see where the game finds itself with my two boys.

 I’d end this with something clever but I think George Will probably said it best when he wrote, “Baseball, it is said, is only a game.  True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona.”