Some of you know me here...I am a junior LHP at a college in New York. I've only strayed into the Ladies Only forum a few times (large handfuls of X-chromosomes tend to scare us egotistical Y's away), sometimes to ask for advice and other times to share some stories. This post will be sort of the latter.
I started dating a girl back in October, and we've developed a very good relationship over the short period of time we've been dating. Now that it's (finally) February, I started explaining to her that my hybernation-depression is over. She was a bit confused, and when I gave her the short "baseball season babe", she still didn't quite grasp the concept.
Of course she knows I play baseball, and she knows I'm very passionate about the game. I've showed her some of the threads on this site several times and talk about the game a lot with my roommates and teammates who I surround myself with. But now that the weather is going to begin to turn and opening day creeps closer and closer, that yearning for the diamond starts to hit me. Starting in a few weeks and running into May, I'll be playing a full NCAA baseball schedule, on top of the classes I take, on top of the 12 hour-a-week job I hold at school. Then over the summer, I'll be traveling to Virginia to play another full-fledged schedule in the Valley League, just like I did last summer in the Coastal Plain League. Then it's back to campus for fall season and a slew of bench presses and squat racks.
I have loved the game since I can remember. My parents always tell the story that the only way to shut me up as a baby was to put on a baseball game and sit me in my rocking chair contraption in front of the TV. They say I'd just sit there, peacefully and quietly watching the game. I had no teeth, no hair and wasn't able to walk or talk yet. But I watched the game from beginning to end...or so the story goes.
During my description of how the game completely engulfs my life during the season, I told my girlfriend that the winter months is sort of like taking a pack of Marlboros away from a 30 year smoker. The withdrawal period that brings me the dreariness of resorting to constant Sportscenter Top Tens of flashy running backs and high-flying slam dunks gets old fast. I can only watch MLB Network re-runs about the 1971 World Series so many times before I can rehearse the pitch sequences by memory. So when the seasons finally turn, I can get back into the baseball world that has provided me with so much comfort for most of my life.
So far she has supported me through a bout with tendonitis, fights with Coach, countless body aches, bad bullpen sessions and a whole lot of stats. She's dealt with my Facebook statuses about how great of a day February 14th will be this year because that's the day that P/C report to spring training. She'll deal with 6 AM lifting, late night studying, obnoxiously loud video game sessions with teammates. She'll deal with weekend road trips, weekday afternoon games, nightly analysis. She'll deal with the pleasures of good pitching performances, and the wraths of bad ones. She'll deal with arguments with teammates, discrepencies in opinions, frustrations with level of play. She'll deal with stressful tests, long homework assignments, unforgiving professors.
And that's just from now until the end of spring semester.
Once spring semester is done, she'll be set to graduate with a Nursing degree and will be most likely working in a medical center in New York City. At that time, I'll drive myself down to Virginia and start up a whole new season with a whole new team. And, minus the academic stuff, she'll have to deal with all the same things all over again...long distance.
As I've said in the past, the females in baseball players' lives are sometimes overlooked and taken for granted. A mother's role in our lives, in my opinion, goes without saying...and I've expressed that in the past. But there are many other females in our lives too that share the same type of caring attitude that helps to guide us along and mold us into the players that we are and the people we will become. It's obvious that the "significant others" in our lives play into that role in a major way, and I believe that deserves some recognition.
Hopefully none of the other macho guys that read here see this sappy little piece I just wrote because I'd probably be ridiculed for it. But I suppose we can call it a
