The saddest thing about the 2012 season to me is that in spite of the Braves’ success, and the emotional fun ride it’s been watching Chipper Jones wind down his career, I can’t really say it’s been the most enjoyable season for me as a baseball fan. I’ve attended fewer games than I have in previous years, and despite the games I’ve gone with friends that I enjoyed immensely, I’ve pretty much more or less lost the ability to enjoy going to the ballpark by myself like I used to be able to in the past.
In years past, the end of the regular season was often a melancholy time of the year for me. Four of the last five years, the Braves didn’t make the playoffs, so when the regular season ended, it truly was the end of Braves baseball until April. The default, the fallback, the always something to do, with watching a baseball game was over, unless I wanted to try and find enjoyment in playoff baseball or fall or winter league baseball that didn’t always include the Braves. No matter what, the end of the regular season was always a time of the year with an air of sadness attached to it, because something good and enjoyable was going away for a long time.
It’s been on my mind a lot throughout this entire baseball season, but I can’t really say that I feel quite the same this year. I don’t love baseball any less than I did five years ago, but for a variety of reasons, I can’t say that I feel the same melancholy feeling about the season nearing its end this year. I walked around Turner Field thinking to myself that it really didn’t quite feel like the end of the season. Or maybe the end of the season just didn’t hold the same importance to me as it used to in the past.
No matter what happens in the coming weeks, whether the Braves get bounced in the Wild Card game, or if they get eliminated by the Nationals, Reds or Giants, or win or lose in the World Series, this has been a very interesting season. I’d certainly go bonkers if the Braves become World Champions, and I’d look back at this post and probably do some backpedaling, but I’m being frank here, and I can’t say that ride has been nearly as enjoyable to me as it’s been in past years prior.
Overall, I’ve been to fewer Braves games than I’d been to since like 2006. Combining minor league trips, trips to Baltimore and San Francisco, I’ve attended significantly fewer games this year than I have in prior years.
A large part of this development is the fact that going to baseball games by myself isn’t really enjoyable to me anymore. In past years, I simply didn’t give a fuck about a lot of people, and I found comfort in solitude, and frequently hanging out in the highest points of Turner Field, where the breeze was frequent, the crowds were sparse, and the view of the game was unobstructed, I was simply able to enjoy baseball at such a simple level of just hoping for the Braves to get more hits and score more runs than the other team.
Nowadays, I think I’m more conscious to the fact that I’m by myself a lot, and going to games hasn’t been as enjoyable of an experience as it had been in the past. Furthermore, with the improvement of the Braves themselves, the fairweather fans flock to the park in droves, creating all sorts of human distraction and crowds that sometimes make me feel uneasy to be around. Being alone around not a lot of people isn’t as bad to me as being alone amongst tons of people. Often times throughout this season, I’ve asked myself if I wanted to go to the game, and frequently found myself rationalizing reasons why I shouldn’t; don’t want to pay to park, dollar tickets are impossible to get because of the fairweathers, don’t want to eat crap food, it’s hot as balls, or I just don’t feel like going. Many times, the idea of simply watching at home, where it’s air-conditioned, and where I could slip away and play LoL or Zbs if the game got out of hand seemed more appealing to me.
This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy going to the ballpark at all, far from it. I look back at the collection of ticket stubs from this year, and a vast majority of them have one thing in common; games in which I went with friends. Those games have all been enjoyable in some way or fashion, and frankly, I wouldn’t have gone to any of those games if there were nobody to go with. Whether it’s sitting in 116F heat or watching a bunch of Bay Area retards pumping their fists, none of it is as good alone than it is with friends.
I ponder about the future when it comes to future Braves games. A part of me wonders if I should try and make some local friends that actually like the Braves to go to games with, but I’m kind of a shut-in so that might be difficult. There’s an eccentric part of me that is deliberating an idea of simply going over the top, and getting an 81-game package of every home game in the cheap seats, and essentially forcing myself by virtue of fronting the money, into going to as many games as possible, and seeing if I could re-ignite the spark of enjoying baseball games, whether or not I’m with other people.
Either way, as much as I hate to admit it, until I figure out what I want to do when it comes to going to the ballpark in the future, the ballpark might feasibly lose out to other social engagements, or the comfort of my own home.
