I never really liked playing baseball all that much. I played organized baseball for about seven years, with five of those being on a travel team. There was a time when I really did love playing, but I simply never cared for the competitive part. I didn’t outright hate it, but I was both too uncaring about travel baseball in the grand scheme of life while still being too anxious about my performance on any given play — which was not a very good combination. I mainly played catcher and liked it well enough. I had something to do on every play and I was always particularly concerned about blocking. We were only 13 years old and pitchers still weren’t that accurate, so they would often spike fastballs into the ground, which, combined with the fact that I was perpetually tense and nervous, is likely why I was not very good at blocking. It made every game feel way too long. Each weekend tournament would drag on, mirroring the longest days of the summer in which we were playing. Yet, each season ended up going by so fast — too fast for me to really get to know my teammates well or even get invested in the season as a whole. I couldn’t help but feel fall creeping in. We spent the late winter and early spring getting ready to play baseball for the summer, yet our actual season where we played games only spanned a couple months. Considering the fact that we also only played on the weekends, we never really played that much baseball.
I was — and still am — too unconcerned about the future to really be invested in it, yet too anxious about the present to enjoy what I was doing. My baseball career ended rather unceremoniously; my arm started to hurt every time I’d throw a baseball and I started to care less than the necessary threshold for me to continue, so I stopped playing. I didn’t give much thought to its ending then, but I haven’t played any organized baseball since.
As I am writing this, summer is about two-thirds over. Each day seems to drag on as I somehow spend hours doing nothing, and yet it feels like summer only started a couple weeks ago. Everything is too hot to focus on much at the moment, and summer has been going on too long to even enjoy the present. Everything feels unmoving as the fall semester lurks just around the corner. This is a common feeling during the dog days of summer — one that everyone knows, but especially younger people. The dog days have always felt as if it were a term specifically created for students during that time period over the summer when you have forgotten what it was like to go to class every day and start to yearn for school to start again so your days will be different.
When I was in high school, the dog days of summer were just as long, but mainly consisted of seeing friends, sleeping in and taking time for myself to reset for the upcoming school year. I remember vividly the first summer after I turned 17, when I finally had no legal driving curfew. I would always end up driving my friends home at night and wouldn’t get back until very late. Sometimes those car rides were filled with conversation and other times they were dead silent because of some argument or incident that happened, but either way I still had to drive people home because I always had people to drive home. There was no specter of young adulthood, just typical teenage concerns. That absence of angst about the future is what creates the importance of summer, and the dog days in it.
As a college student, this time feels more abstract than before. The dog days still technically exist, but I work most days this summer. My call time is early enough in the morning that I have to limit how late I can stay up. Most of my friends are out of town and I don’t currently have access to a car. In a sense, the dog days that I once knew are gone and so is the summer that went along with them. I really do miss all of those nighttime drives — the loud and the quiet ones. I didn’t take those drives for granted at each moment but what I did take for granted was that they would keep happening in the same way.
That summer, all of my friends and I fawned over the idea of going to college. Now, we fawn over the idea of internships and then, eventually, our careers. As all of this is happening, I feel like I am losing a grip on the present again. Time is slipping away now, and I am taking for granted the last few summers before I enter the dreaded workforce, where one summer’s day will be just another day that could be placed anywhere on a calendar.
However, I have discovered that as much as everything, least of all summer, changes, some things stay the same. I started following baseball rather closely again. I watch almost every Detroit Tigers game, just like I used to. As much as my conception of summer has changed the past few years, baseball is almost exactly the same as I remember it. Players hit, run, throw and field. I remember exactly how it works. I even used to do all of those things! And yet, I am interacting with the sport much differently than I used to, as a spectator rather than a participant. I am the one who changed, not baseball.
My aforementioned relationship with baseball is quite different now from what it was when I played in my early teens. I first started playing baseball simply because I was obsessed with it. I couldn’t possibly get enough. I knew every player on every roster. I knew who did what, where they played and why they were where they were. It was a religion for me. But as I started playing more and more, and competitively, I stopped following the sport as closely. Not only did I stop liking to play baseball that much, but I also basically stopped watching baseball altogether. I used to be able to name every player on every roster when I started playing, but by the time I stopped, I didn’t watch any more than a couple of games during the regular season.
I still haven’t played an organized baseball game since I was 13. Yet, in the past two summers, my first two as a college student, I have watched almost every Tigers game and attended more games at Comerica Park than I ever did in every other year of my life combined. After a prolonged breakup, baseball and I have gotten back together. It certainly isn’t the same as when I was younger. I don’t play baseball anymore, but I observe it in such a way that I couldn’t have when I played the sport at 13. When first and third situations, pickoff signals and other seemingly mundane situations happen, I see them in a way that I didn’t before. I see the way catchers initiate these plays, either by dropping their glove or standing in front of home plate before a play to give signs. It makes sense to me now.
My newfound love for baseball is very real. I spend more time with baseball any summer day this summer than with any other person or hobby. But I couldn’t have appreciated baseball in the way that I do now without experiencing baseball as I did when I played. Every long inning I spent behind the plate as a player made me appreciate the intricacies that major league catchers go through. Each comparatively elementary pitch I have seen as a hitter made me appreciate the insanity of trying to hit a pitch thrown by a major leaguer. It’s this newfound appreciation and love that I have for the game that made baseball come full circle for me as a player. As I’ve come to love baseball in its totality over the past few years, I have grown to love my time as a young baseball player as well even if I took it for granted at the time. I’m not sure that I will pick up a mitt again in the future, but if I do, I am sure that I will find a way to love baseball in a new and completely different way, even if it takes some time.
Undoubtedly, this summer will not be unlike any other summer of my life. It will end and I will look back on it and wish I had done more. Next summer will be my last before graduating. I will likely look back on this summer and realize that I took it for granted, and then the concept of summer as I have known it will be done forever. I’m not sure I will ever live in the same city as any of my oldest friends for such an extended period of time ever again. I am not sure there will ever be another three month recurring pause in my life until I retire. I’m not sure that I will ever really appreciate what these long, hot, clammy summer days meant to me.
But, at the end of the day, such is life. People often think ahead instead of worrying about the present, which means that they are inevitably never truly able to wholly appreciate every moment, whether it’s a sport or a season. Then, those moments end. Dwelling on that doesn’t really take you far. But, without those moments and that longing, we wouldn’t be able to create those brief, if fleeting, beautiful instances where there is nothing to take for granted in life.
If I never thought about or missed what my life was like even just a couple of years ago, then I wouldn’t have changed from that point. My summers, relationship to baseball and life are much different than they used to be. However, without those losses of perspective and gaining of others, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I won’t ever exist in the same way that I used to. I might play organized baseball again one day, but certainly not in the way I used to. It would have to be filled with joy and imbued with the love that I have learned for the game. Similarly, the summers where I didn’t have to focus on what I would be doing the following summer, or even the following month, won’t come back. And then, as I think back about how different my summers are now compared to previous summers, I think that difference is a good thing.
Statement Columnist Gabe Efros can be reached at gefros@umich.edu.
