Learning to love baseball,  the hard way   Laurel Poeton, avid Red Sox fan

When I was a kid we would drive from Vermont to Massachusetts to visit my grandfather. We usually left at night. This meant that we got to listen to the game on the radio if the Red Sox were playing. Now, what you need to understand about radio waves and mountains is that they don't work well together. My dad would find the game on the radio as we left the house but as we got down the road, we would lose the station. This did not mean that the station was changed. Oh no. We listened to the static on the radio as my dad was a believer that the station would come back.

As a kid, radio static was my enemy. I have vivid memories of feeling crazy as we got every third word, or a quick glimpse of clarity on the radio. This is how I came to love baseball. The tension of not knowing what was happening at the game, but knowing that something was happening plays with your emotions. You hang on every word that you can catch. 

As an adult one of my favorite places to be at is a ball park. When I lived in San Francisco I loved going to AT&T Park. When the Giants made it to the World Series in 2010 I promised my dad's brother I would help him fulfill a bucket list desire and get us tickets to a game. My friends thought I was crazy but I was too excited to see a World Series game in person to care about ticket prices. I was really excited to bring so much joy to my uncle. Even though the Giants lost the game that we attended it was one of the best games I have ever been to. I lived in San Francisco's Mission district that year and when the Giants won, there was so much passion and excitement in the streets. The Mission exploded into one big party.

Now that I live in Oakland, my second favorite team is the Oakland A's. As I write this, I am watching game three of the A's vs. Red Sox at Fenway Park. Just the other day I bought tickets for the series in June. I am so excited to see my two favorite teams play each other live. It's confusing to others when I root for both teams but really, I am happy no matter who wins when these two teams play each other.

My dad is so proud that his daughter has grown up and now loves baseball as much as he does. I tell my friends with daughters not to give up on teaching them to love the sport. It will happen with time. It happened to me. 

p.s. - I recently attended a memory of life for an amazing man who

had a passion for baseball. We ended the church ceremony with everyone singing, 'Take Me Out to The Ball Game.' It was a most beautiful way to remember a fellow baseball lover. 

When the worst team played the best team Howard Pearlstein, fan extraordinaire

Going into the last game, my high school baseball team's record

was 0-and-11. We were the "easy win" every other team in the league loved. Our coach was terrible. The only technique he ever taught us was how to slide into second with our spikes up. Our players were disorganized. There was no way around it, we just stank.

I was no longer a player. I could hit but I was flat-footed and overweight, and a smoker. I was quick; I played second base for a while but couldn't run laps. I thought for sure I'd die if I had to do it. I stayed with the team as manager, mostly sitting in the bleachers and smoking, sometimes hitting grounders with a fungo bat for fielding practice.

From my perspective, the most exciting thing that happened that season was when Vic Moll came up to me in the bleachers and handed me a paperback copy of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl."

After one more game the season would be over, and we were playing an away game at ... I think it was Springfield ... and we were already seeing ourselves circling the bowl for the final flushing in a no-win season. They were 11-and-0 and bound for the state championship.

After the 20-minute bus ride, we pulled in. They were smiling. We were sighing.

Well, not to drag it out, but we won. Really. We won 3-2. And no one was more surprised than we were.

But we had come in completely loose and they were, quite justifiably, overconfident.

And then it hit the fan.

They came at us with bats swinging, roaring at us stuff about how we stole their undefeated season. You SOBs weren't supposed to win! You cheated! You're going to pay for it! We'll kill you!  

I believed it. I thought: So this is what it looks like when a lynch mob comes for you.

Flat-footed smoker or not, I ran for the bus faster than I could have imagined, along with the rest of the team. I felt as if I'd just broken the world record for the 100-yard dash. But I also felt as if I were running though deep mud and my feet could barely move.

They surrounded the bus once we were inside, bashing sides and windows, headlights and taillights. I hadn't thought about it for years until I saw those TV commercials with the 49ers Colin Kaepernick being mobbed by a losing team, and told my wife, "That's sort of what it was like, but that's the G-rated version."

The local cops did not seem interested in protecting us. Of course they had gone to the same high school. Probably some players were their kids. But the state troopers were there, and they actually fired shots in the air to get the mob's attention, while the bus driver was desperately turning the ignition key again and again, cranking the engine to get going. No, he didn't flood it. It caught.

And on the ride back, a few miles down the road, we were kind of feeling good. We won one. We actually won one.

I thought: "I hope to hell I'll be able to laugh about this someday."

Ha-ha.

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