I enjoy sports, or should I say the hoorah that comes along with them. Aside from hockey, I honestly could care less about the actual
score and logistics of a game. What I’m really interested in is the aura: fans, bars, music, food, and the people I’ll meet at the games. I don’t bet on the sports, unless it's the color of the gatorade at the superbowl (which I always win). Most of the time, if I’m at a Red Sox game, for example, I’m sitting in the cheapest seats that the student discount can get me, looking at the rosters with my friends, drinking a $13 Truly, while anticipating the playing of Sweet Caroline on the speakers. Considering I don’t really know what's going on while I’m at the game, you can imagine that I don’t know much at all about what’s going on while I’m not there. For this reason, and many others, I consider myself more of a casual sports fan.
I love Fenway and the dopamine hit it gives my body. Without looking it up, I had no idea what was going on in the MLB lockout or why it happened. The one thing I knew was that until it ended there was no shot I made it back into Fenway. What the lockout meant to me had nothing to do with the players or the game itself, but the happiness I get from being around it all. The local bars around Fenway -- Game On, Fenway Johnnies, and Lorettas -- are always a great time, but they’re different when you look around and see Red Sox jerseys instead of crop tops and low rise jeans. To casual fans like myself, the baseball lockout means no nips on the T, no crowded Lansdowne street, and no more Sweet Caroline.
I never quite understood the logic of agreeing to, or choosing to, stop playing the game you love and have spent your entire life playing just because of some money and title holder discrepancies. I understood that some teams were earning a significantly lower amount of money, but I always thought that if every team had an equal baseline salary, one that would increase depending on the players on the team and the statistics that you record each season, everyone should just be happy and content with what they have. Also, I don’t think that in the world we are living in today an athlete has any room to complain about trying to make more million dollars than someone else.
To conclude, I would like to invite all people to reflect on these past two years that have been significantly altered because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It sucked. Sucked! No one enjoyed hunting for toilet paper or wipes during quarantine. Today, over 700 days later, the world finally has almost complete normalcy which is so refreshing to see and hear. I for one feel lucky that America’s favorite pastime, baseball, is back in action to celebrate this return to normalcy. 2022 without a baseball season would have been the icing on the cake, and would really make a good thing, normal life, bad.
As a casual sports fan, I was not happy with the decisions that were being made or the way the future looked to be panning out to be. Thankfully the MLB got it together, and ith spring training in full swing, there is a season planned for the 2022 season. This casual sports fan is going to be returning to Fenway and will be writing to you soon about that strange phenomenon known to me as March Madness. Woo Hoo!
Does anyone else have that special game or stadium they love? That feeling that just can’t be recreated anywhere else? Let us know in the comments below!
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