I wore a Padres shirt today.  I never do that in December.  I wasn’t sure why I grabbed the blue shirt with a white “SD” on it until I had a chance to ruminate on what happened today.   Then, it hit me; like taking a bowling ball off my right big toe. I subconsciously chose a Padres shirt today because I am missing something today that I had yesterday… and the day before… every day for the past 28 years or so.  As Don Henley once sang:

Offer up your best defense.  This is the end…. This is the end of the innocence.

My childhood died the day Adrian Gonzalez became a Boston Red Sock.

Humankind’s most romantic athletic endeavor is, without question, the National Pastime.  The poetry, drama and passion cannot be found anywhere else.  I’d rather be at a baseball game than any theatre performance, museum or concert.  More importantly baseball was the last remaining strand from the fiber of my youth.  The majority, and possibly the vast majority, of my childhood memories involve baseball.  Whether it was a making a shoe-string catch in right field during a little league game, playing wiffle ball in my cul-de-sac and finally hitting a ball over my neighbor’s house, or sitting in the right field bleachers on a sun-drenched afternoon watching Tony Gwynn do his warm-up tosses between innings and singing along to “Margaritaville” with my dad, baseball is in my very soul.  Baseball keeps me young. 

But not anymore.  My wistful, idealistic view of the game finally vanished into the fog of the past.  When Adrian Gonzalez was traded, it was as if the game of baseball slapped me with the back of its hand, saying:

“Don’t you get it, yet?  I’m tired of you looking at me like I am some sort of pure harbor for hopeful, child-like enthusiasm.  I am not what you remember.  I don’t care how much you love me.  I am not a beautiful game played by fully-grown kids.  I am a grown-up business for men to wage war with each other and to negotiate with management to do everything they can to build a future for themselves.  You’re not on the field, no matter how much you envision yourself there.  Grow up!”

“But, baseball, aren’t you the same game I grew up adoring?”

“No, and I haven’t been for years.  You’ve simply elected not to see it.”

(Sigh) “And so I haven’t.”

That’s when I realized, it’s not about the game anymore.  Maybe it never was.  I suppose the 7-year-old inside of me doesn’t pick up on those sorts of things.  And maybe that’s what hurts the most.  Maybe this game never was what I wanted it to be: the extension of what I used to do in my backyard, playing catch with my dad.  This is a profession.  And, as we all know, most professions aren’t fair.  Work can be as cut-throat as the depths of human imagination can conjure up.

So it is with baseball.  It just isn’t fair.  No matter what my team does, it is at the total and complete mercy of a handful of other teams.  Not on the field, but off of it.  There is a hierarchy, a class-system and there is just no way to ever change.

So I sit here.  Looking at a pile of once-cherished baseball tickets on my office desk and realizing I’m not a child, baseball is not my game any longer; it is just a group of grown-ups trying to get ahead of another group of grown-ups.  It’s not personal, it’s just business.  And it sucks.