This is for you, girlfriend.

Admit it. You don’t get baseball. Why do people get so crazy about it? It is hardly America’s national pastime any more. That accolade belongs to football. And football makes sense. Big guys push around other big guys and the little guy with the ball runs really fast. Got it. You can’t ever remember watching an entire game of baseball ever. And now you’ve gone and got involved with a baseball fanatic. Someone whose idea of an exciting date is to go to a bar, order a Miller High Life and watch a Red Sox/Yankees game. And can think that a 2-1 score can be the most exciting game that he ever saw. (Of course, only if the Red Sox win.)

I’ve been there. My family were Green Bay Packer fans so we were genetic MOFFs (More Of a Football Fan). The only baseball games I went to were a few in college and that was more for the tailgate parties and a chance to meet guys than for the game.

And then I started a long distance relationship with a Red Sox fan whose best friend was a Cleveland Indians fan. Sitting on the couch between them and their banter, I figured out quickly that if I wasn’t going to be left behind, I had to learn something about baseball. Up until then, baseball appeared to me to be a game of nothing more than grown men waiting for something to happen: waiting to throw a ball, waiting to hit a ball and waiting for someone to come to your base and waiting for a ball to pop up and come to you in the outfield.

So I kept asking questions of the Boyfriend and the Baseball Buddy. Why does that batter fight with the ump? Shouldn't he be nice to him? Why does the batter go through that funky ritual every blooming time he bats? Isn't that against the rules to try to take out the second baseman when you slide?

It took me awhile, but I found it. I found something that makes me really like the game. It’s the quirkiness, the personalities, the superstitions, the rituals, the teamwork, and the oddities that make me really like this game. Stats still bore me and I’m not one to analyze to death whether a manager should have taken out a starting pitcher sooner and I often fall asleep during the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th Innings. But baseball is a great game, and if you approach it right, I bet you’ll discover that for yourself. And maybe you’ll fall in love with baseball even if you fall out of love with the boyfriend. So first you have to understand the game just enough to watch it. Then you got to find the fun stuff in it and ignore the stuff that bores you to tears.

This is for you, girlfriend.