Books and Baseball - and why they matter

There are three things I love in the hobby/passion category. Writing, reading, and baseball. And I mean LOVE.

Now, the first two you could probably guess, seeing as they are the focus of this blog. The third I assume you don't care much about, so I try not to talk about it. But I'm going to today, so bear with me, please, because I will bring it back to the first two.

I am obsessed with baseball, and more specifically the Texas Rangers. For those not in the baseball know, the Rangers are traditionally awful. As in, in their entire existence, they have won one single playoff game. That's bad.

But I still love them, and I love the game. I won't bore you with why I love it, and why I think it is better than any other sport. What you need to know is that there are 162 games in the season, and I watch most or all of about 90% of them, if not more. I even regularly watch games that the Rangers aren't playing in (such as right now...).

I get into the games. Even when I'm watching one alone, I talk to the TV and the players and I pump my fist in the air. I have gotten goosebumps when reading articles about the Rangers, found myself unable to breathe over the excitement of an important win, and screamed in frustration.

Yea, I kinda love Texas...

But every now and then, when I'm watching a game, I think, what's the point? Why are thousands of people watching a group of guys getting paid millions of dollars to play a game.

Plain and simple, it might just be a game in the literal sense, but it is so much more than that. Major League Baseball has a series of ads with the slogan, "This is Beyond Baseball." And so much of it is. It's about a team working together, persevering, defying the odds. It's about thousands of people coming together to cheer for the same outcome. It's about a pitcher going out every day with a chance at a perfect game - no matter what happened in the past - in a game where perfection isn't the goal. No team will ever win 162 games. Even the best teams lose at least 60 games each season.

Baseball (and any pro sport, I'm just using the one closest to my heart), at its basic level, is an escape. Whatever is going on in your life or in the world, you have three hours where your team winning is, for the moment, all that matters. You can find joy in their success and sadness in another losing season.

And really, at the end of the day, how is this so different from books? I once had a roommate who believed that books were pointless and their existence did nothing to better the world. I was furious, not to mention hurt. This thing that I loved, devoured in my spare time, and endeavored to create myself could not be useless - that much I knew.

So why aren't they? I can see how, to someone who finds no pleasure in reading, all the books in the world can seem like wasted space. Except you and I know that books are quite the opposite. So why?

From www.freedomlab.org

Books are magical worlds that take us somewhere outside of our own. They introduce to us people we may never have the chance to meet, and sometimes people who remind us of someone in our life - or even ourselves.

Books make us think about life and the world we exist in. They make us ache and cry and laugh. They keep us company when we're lonely and become our friends, which we then want to share with our real life friends. Books can unite us and inspire us.

And, like baseball, they are an escape. They give us an opportunity to stop thinking about our own lives and immerse ourselves in someone else's. They enrich our lives, yet still give us an opportunity to get away from our life.

Which brings me to writing, and why writers (and baseball players) aren't wasting their time, even if the world as a whole may not always agree on that.

Someone has to write the book. Someone has to write the words that uplift and challenge and entertain. All it takes is
one
word
at
a
time.