A History of Baseball According to Sarah

I became a real baseball fan in 1994. This is strange for many reasons, not least of which is that 1994 was the year that the season ended in August, with no postseason, because of the players’ strike.
I don’t remember why I suddenly got into baseball. I’d paid peripheral attention to it over the years, and had been to the old Fulton County Stadium for a Braves game once on a choir trip, but thus far in my life the most attention I’d paid to a professional sport was to the NBA, for the first few years the Hornets were in Charlotte. But something about baseball stuck with me that summer between 10th and 11th grades. I remember being at the farm for two weeks, and going over to Uncle Joe’s house each afternoon or evening to watch the Braves play on TBS. My cousin Michael was a big Phillies fan and we teased him mercilessly. The next summer, we used one of the days at the farm to drive the hour to Philadelphia and watch the Phillies take on the Braves in the Vet, a stadium that doesn’t exist anymore.
I became a Braves fan for three reasons: they were the closest major league team to my home in Charlotte, they were always on TV thanks to Ted Turner and TBS, and hey, they were good. It’s easy to root for a winning team. I can’t profess to have been one of those Braves fans who stuck with them through the bleak 1980s (sorry, Carter and Dr. G), but I guess you could say I jumped on the bandwagon relatively early. Relative, at least, when you consider that 1994 was only 3 years into their incredible reign over their division.
The strike came, and it probably should have nipped my fandom in the bud. But it didn’t. By October 1995, I was cheering in the parking lot of Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill just after performing in a huge marching band competition as Marquis Grissom caught the ball and the Braves topped the Indians to win the World Series. My sister had been listening on a Walkman, and told me the news. We went back to my grandmother’s condo and watched enless postgame coverage on TV.
The next summer I travelled to Atlanta to see a game with my friend Ginger, and that fall I enrolled at Georgia Tech. While my decision to go to Tech didn’t have anything to do with baseball, the fact that the Braves played minutes away from campus was icing on the cake. The first thing I ever remember asking Carter to do for me was bring me a program from a 1996 World Series game he saw. I’d known him for probably a day and was already demanding things. I still have that program somewhere. The Yankees, of course, won the series.
In August 1997 I started co-oping in Houston and attended my first Astros game in the Astrodome. We sat in centerfield, where they had some guy dressed up in a military-ish uniform who shot a cannon each time a player hit a home run. That spring, Ginger came to visit me in Houston and we went to see the Astros take on the visiting Braves, who were still very much my team. The lady I lived with had given us some great tickets, about 10 rows back from the Braves dugout. We were in heaven.
In October 1999 I saw my first (and thus far, only) World Series. I managed to get standing room only tickets to Games 1 and 2 in Atlanta. The Yankees won both, and went on to sweep the Series. Freaking Yankees. I haven’t been able to stomach them since.
I attended my fair share of Braves games over the years I spent at Georgia Tech. I went to a bunch of Astros games as well, both in the Astrodome and at the new Enron Field when it opened in 2000, during my six co-op tours in Houston. But the Braves were still my team, my boys. I couldn’t imagine ever straying from that. Astros, sure, but Braves first. Always first.
In 2001 I moved to Palo Alto, California and tried to get used to the idea that my baseball experience would now involve a lot less of the Braves and a lot more of the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s. I’d never really paid much attention to the American League, and still don’t. Oh, I keep up with the players and general trends, but the National League is my home. I religiously watched the 2001 World Series between the Diamondbacks and Yankees, the first time I’d paid close attention to a series that didn’t involve the Braves.
I went to a handful of Giants games, including one where we sat a few rows behind Barry Bonds’s kids. San Francisco’s beautiful ballpark is what really began my quest to see all 30 baseball teams play in their home stadiums. I’ve checked 15, exactly half, off that list thus far, with many of those visited in the past 4 years.
In April 2002 I went to Opening Day for the A’s. In May 2002 the Braves came to town to play the Giants and not a single one of my friends would go to the game with me. Not wanting to give up my one chance to see my boys, I went alone, bought a ticket off a scalper, and sat about 20 rows behind the Braves dugout talking to two old guys next to me. They knew the Giants, I knew the Braves; it was one of the best times I’ve had at a baseball game.
That summer I moved to Houston permanently. I went to a bunch of Astros games in 2002 and 2003, making special effort to attend every game of the once-a-season visit from the Braves. In 2003 I went on a baseball road trip with a group of friends, traveling to New York and Boston to see the Astros play the Yankees and Red Sox, and to see Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. By sheer coincidence, we were sitting in the first row of seats in right field on June 11 when the Astros used 6 pitchers in a no-hitter against New York. It was one of the coolest and most bizarre baseball feats I will ever see.
In October 2003, while vacationing in Greece, I poked my head into a small bar on the island of Santorini to get an update on the Marlins-Cubs NLCS. Knowing only that something strange had happened, I used some of my precious minutes at an Internet cafe to read that the Cubs’ curse had been extended after the infamous Steve Bartman reached over the rail to catch a fly ball away from Moises Alou.
In 2004, I decided it was time to make one of my closet dreams a reality and along with Jason and Chris, I became a baseball season ticket holder. We only had a third of the season (27 games), and the tickets were for the Astros (not the Braves), but it was close enough for me. When the Braves came to town early in the season, I cheered for them. Every other game I rooted for the Astros and came to know the team even better than I had during my six previous years of attending Astros games on and off. And it happened. I don’t when, or why, or how. But it happened. I became an Astros fan, Braves second, Astros first. My Astros, first.
Of course, an ulterior motive for buying season tickets in 2004 was that it gave the opportunity to buy ticket to the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game at Minute Maid Park. We revelled in Lance Berkman’s great showing at the derby as he smacked ball after ball over the train tracks and into the black night, a feat topped only by winner Miguel Tejada. We sympathized with Roger Clemens as he gave up 6 runs in his All-Star game star in his city, Houston, after exhausting himself acting as the ultimate city ambassador in the days before the game.
While I was hiking the Inca Trail in September, the Astros went on a 12-game win streak, part of their 36-10 finish. On the last day of the season, they redeemed themselves from being written off at the All-Star break and won the Wild Card.
I watched Games 1 and 2 in Atlanta, cheering as Jeff Bagwell hit his first postseason home run. I was in the stands for Games 3 and 4, leaving the latter in the 8th inning only to get to Edgar and Betsy’s wedding. The scary part is that they’d have understood if we’d been late to the nuptials. We all gathered to watch the crucial Game 5 and whooped as the Astros won their first postseason series and headed to St. Louis.
I was at Minute Maid Park when the Astros battled back to tie the NLCS 2-2, and from Section 311 I watched Brandon Backe toss a 1-hitter against an equally in-the-zone Woody Williams. When Jeff Kent hit a 3-run walkoff homer in the bottom of the 9th, I thought I would die. The 2004 NLCS Game 5 is arguably the best game, in any sport, that I have ever seen. I say “arguably” only because I was at the stadium again for last Sunday’s game.
I was at Opening Day again this year, even though we didn’t renew our season tickets. (We will next year.) I suffered with the team as they fell to 15-30 in mid-May, and perked up when Morgan Ensberg got hot and the team started to climb in the standings. I was way out in right field as the Astros won the Wild Card again, on the last day of the season, with a great Roy Oswalt performance and a win over the evil Cubs.
I spent the majority of last weekend at the ballpark once again as Oswalt pitched to a win on Saturday and we prepared for the potential clincher on Sunday. 6 hours, 18 innings, and 23 players later, the Astros were NLDS champions again, heading to St. Louis for a rematch. I will be at game this Saturday, and Sunday, and even Monday if Game 5 is necessary. I cannot wait to put on my jersey and get ready to scream some more.
As I thought about all this, I realized that I have been fortunate enough to see some spectacular baseball over the past decade. As the Astros face the Cardinals tonight in Game 1 of the NLCS, I hope that the next decade of my baseball fanship is even better.