I told them that more than sixty years of watching Dodger baseball had taught me one enduring truth: There is always enough time left in the season for the Dodgers to disappoint you.
And tonight, they did.
The Milwaukee Brewers swept the Dodgers in four games, and just like that, October baseball was over.
When you've been a baseball fan long enough, you come to understand that a loss like this means something more than the end of a season. It means winter has arrived.
The grass may still be green in Southern California, the days may still be warm, and the calendar may insist that it's only October. But for a baseball fan, it's wintertime. The lights are out, the seats are empty, and there is no game tomorrow.
Winter, of course, doesn't last forever.
The snow will fall, covering the ground and the plants beneath it. For a while, everything will seem dormant, perhaps even dead. But spring will come again, and somewhere a green blade of grass will push its way through the earth. And with it will come that unreasonable, irresistible hope that this year might be different.
It always does.
Through spring and into summer, that hope will grow. There will be stretches when it seems to wither beneath the summer heat, when the team looks lost and the season seems to be slipping away. Then there will be a great catch, a well-timed hit, a late-inning rally, and hope will begin growing again.
And as it grows, it will give us shade.
That's one of the wonderful things about baseball. For a few hours, it gives us shelter from the things that trouble us. We can sit in a ballpark and watch grown men play a child's game. We can talk about batting averages, pitching changes, defensive shifts, and whether the manager has lost his mind. We can argue about strategy and scores, about players and teams, with all the conviction we bring to politics, yet somehow without the same rancor.
We can disagree, laugh about it, and go home friends.
Perhaps that's because, for all the importance we attach to baseball, somewhere deep down we understand that it's still just a game. And maybe that's precisely why it matters so much.
This season, I attended 28 baseball games. Eight at Dodger Stadium, three at Angel Stadium, and seventeen more at a variety of minor league ballparks. Some were wonderful games. Some were mediocre. Some were played in heat that made you wonder why anyone would willingly sit outdoors for three hours.
But every one of them was baseball.
And those 28 games were only part of my summer. I listened to at least half of the Dodgers' games, and heard at least a few innings of all the others. If I didn't get to see a game, I always read the box score. There's something satisfying about a box score, those columns of numbers that tell the story of a game, even when you weren't there to see it. You can reconstruct the innings, imagine the opportunities missed, and appreciate the moments when somebody came through.
This summer also brought something special: the return of Charlie Steiner to the Dodgers' broadcast booth. After his battle with cancer, hearing his voice again was a victory worth celebrating, one that had nothing to do with wins and losses on the field. Listening to Charlie call the play-by-play, with Rick Monday adding his observations and color, was one of the genuine pleasures of the season.
For those of us who grew up with Vin Scully, those voices carried a faint reminder of something we once knew so well. Only faintly, of course. Vin was Vin, a voice and a storyteller unlike any other, and there will never be another quite like him. But there was something reassuring about listening to Charlie and Rick describe the action, fill the spaces between pitches, and occasionally wander into a story that had little to do with the game at hand. It was the familiar rhythm of baseball on the radio, a sound that has accompanied so many of my summers. And this year, knowing what Charlie had overcome to return to that microphone made those familiar sounds all the sweeter.
So, for me, it wasn't simply 28 visits to a ballpark. It was another full season of baseball, experienced in person, over the radio, on television, and through the box scores. Baseball was there almost every day, woven into the rhythm of life from spring through October. Sometimes it commanded my full attention. Sometimes it was simply a familiar voice in the background, keeping me company while I went about the business of living.
And it was a wonderful summer.
There were conversations with strangers, arguments over calls, moments of brilliance, moments of frustration, and those long, pleasant stretches when nothing much seemed to be happening at all. There was the simple pleasure of sitting in the stands, keeping score in your head, watching the game unfold, and knowing that for the next few hours, nothing else demanded your attention.
I've come to believe that those hours are as much a part of baseball as the victories and defeats. Perhaps more so.
After sixty years, I've seen enough seasons to know that championships are rare, disappointments are plentiful, and hope is inexhaustible. I've also learned that the real gift of baseball isn't necessarily what happens in October. It's everything that happens between the first pitch of spring and the final out of autumn.
Tonight, the Dodgers lost. Their season is over. There will be no more October baseball for us this year.
And yes, I'm disappointed.
But I had 28 afternoons and evenings at ballparks, countless hours listening to games, a season's worth of box scores, the pleasure of hearing an old friend return to the broadcast booth, a summer full of memories, and another season to add to the more than sixty I've been fortunate enough to enjoy since my grandfather first took me to the ballpark.
That's not a bad return on a summer.
There will be another spring. There will be green grass, the crack of a bat, the sound of a ball hitting a glove, familiar voices coming through the radio, and another season of unreasonable hope. And somewhere along the way, the Dodgers will find new ways to thrill us, frustrate us, and perhaps disappoint us all over again.
But that's for another season.
For now, the ballparks are quiet, the summer is behind us, and the long wait for spring has begun.
It's finally wintertime.
