Make a (Baseball) List and Check it Twice

Slammin' Sam on Sports Media
Isn’t it a great time of year when exhilaration for two sports nears its simultaneous zenith? Yep, here we are again. The NCAA tourney extended an invitation to several Cinderellas for the Sweet 16, while baseball fans are welcome to delude themselves with fairytale endings for 30 darlings.

Today, Slammin’ Sam on Sports Media stops (or at least puts a pause on) the Madness and shifts to baseball.

In 2008, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman developed an unlikely friendship in “The Bucket List.” As two men stared the end of their lives in the face, they arrived at the same realization. All of us want to look back on our lives with no regrets. Knowing you enjoyed some adventure is important as well.

If you enjoyed the movie, or if those ideas resonate with you, now’s the time to start planning your list. Fortunately “The Baseball Fan’s Bucket List” contains a full season’s worth of suggestions.

Some of my favorites on the book’s list include:
Go to Opening Day
“Opening Day is the grandest day of the Major League Baseball season. Hope fills the air. Everyone at the ballpark feels it-from the food vendors and ticket takers to the fans who sit in the last row of the bleachers to the players warming up on the field.” (Baseball, 18)

See a Triple-A Pacific Coast League Game
I can personally vouch for the authors when they write, “Triple-A Baseball is infectious.” The fact that these players are one step below the Major Leagues means a call up is a possibility at literally any time. That includes in the middle of a contest.

Tour the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory
Did you know that a bat is subject to rigid specifications? If you read the book or make the journey, you’ll find out how far a piece of wood comes so that a player can get “good wood on the ball.”

Learn the Story behind “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”
Who would’ve thunk that a man who didn’t care a lick about America’s pastime before he penned the song would be behind the baseball staple?

Take a Baseball Tour of Japan
“Going to a Japanese baseball game may throw you off at first. Strategies are different. Ballpark food is different. The ballparks themselves look and feel different. And Japanese baseball fans have very different ways of cheering, more like what you’d see and hear from American football fans than our baseball ones.” (258)

What’s on your baseball bucket list?

Sam Miller/Free Keon