Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Before this summer, I'd been to two baseball games that I remember.

One was when I was five or six, maybe. I was there with my dad, Older Sister, my uncle, my uncle's older daughter if not his younger one, and possibly my dad's dad. My uncle gave us all peanuts and crackerjacks. That's literally all I remember.

When I was a teenager, I went to see a friend of mine sing the national anthem at a baseball game. I went because he'd offered me and Viola free tickets. He forgot the words to the national anthem and instead sang, "I don't remember this part." After that, Viola and I spent the rest of the game working on our fanfiction. We left early.

This summer, though, I've been to two baseball games. In the space of ten days, I doubled the quantity of my baseball experience.

The first game was for a ward activity. I'm on the activities committee now, so I basically do all kinds of stuff I normally wouldn't do simply because I help plan the activities. Since getting the calling, I've gone on hikes, helped purchase three shopping carts of food at Costco, and gone shotgun shooting. And gone to this baseball game. I had some stuff I needed to catch up on, so I spent a fair portion of the game sending emails and writing in my journal.

The second one was for my dad's work party. His company had secured a private box at a game and provided a delicious barbecue dinner. For the first inning or so, I was doing some research on my phone. But for the rest of the game, Baby Brother, Little Sister, Mr. Little Sister, and I were all staring at the field. (Little Brother would have been there. I even got him to commit to reciting "Casey at the Bat" for us. But then he had to go do an activity for his own ward, so he didn't come.)

And that's when I made a discovery: I can't pay attention to baseball games.

I've watched whole basketball, football, soccer, and even softball games and paid attention most of the time. But with baseball, I can't do it. I don't know why.

Anyway, the whole evening went like this:

BABY BROTHER AND I: We're going to pay attention now.

BABY BROTHER AND I: Wait, it's the third inning?

BABY BROTHER AND I: Wait, we got another run?

BABY BROTHER AND I: Let's talk about something for a minute and then pay attention again!

BABY BROTHER AND I: ...we haven't been paying attention, have we?

Long story short, we left early.