The God of Baseball

When I was a kid, all of those years ago, after church, my parents would take me and my brothers to get donuts, and they usually got the news paper, as well. This was well before the internet was a household item, but not before Al Gore started working on it, I'm sure (and, yes, I know he never actually claimed he made the internet). Aside from reading the comics... okay, "Garfield" and maybe "The Far Side," I remember the striking image on the front page: a baseball with a face and a hat. Somedays, it'd smile, others, it'd frown. Other days it just looked at the reader with no expression. Not understanding what was going on, I dubbed the strange entity the most logical thing my six year-old brain could think of: The God of Baseball.

This continued for years, that I believed that somehow, someone made a religion around a baseball with a face. I didn't even ask why his hat had a "C" on it, possibly thinking that the poor ball-headed bastard was illiterate. I think I even had some friends convinced of what it was, despite a few people smacking me up side the head and telling me that it was the Reds mascot. Not the least of them, but the tiniest, was Binkie. Even at six years old, she seemed to be one step ahead of me. What's even worse is that I have no idea just how she knew! She didn't even like sports, outside of ice skating and dancing. Yet, she knew that it was the Reds mascot.

Shortly after my family moved, they stopped getting the newspaper, and the God of Baseball seemed to have vanished. It was possibly just that I didn't notice him anymore, but as the years went buy, I stopped thinking of him as often. It didn't even register to me when I went to some Reds games with Jim, that the mascot was "The God of Baseball." I didn't even know his name (which is Mr. Red), yet it didn't matter. I came back with a mini Reds helmet full of ice cream, a Reds baseball cap, I got a Reds shirt for Christmas one year, and won a Reds Coffee mug, that no one but me uses to this day as an unwritten rule. Yes, I'm a Reds fan, but I still have to admit; Bronson Arroyo cannot pitch to save his life. Yet, he's actually a talented musician.

So, what was it today that made me think of the God of Baseball? Sculpture class. We're working on what's called an "additive problem." Basically, it's a plaster sculpture with a paper armature. I just happened to find a news paper with a familiar face: The God of Baseball. And he was not pleased. Somehow, the Astros have disgraced him, hell, the Diamondbacks did, too. Oh, but not the Pittsburgh Pirates. Somehow, the God of Baseball smote them with his Bat of Glory®, banishing them back to Pennsylvania.

The logical thing one would've done was laugh at the nostalgic factor of one's own naivety. As you all may know, I am not the most logical person in the world. After all, we live in a time where there's a religion based on a sci-fi writer's belief that we forgot we're actually immortal, and that we need to relive traumatic memories. Why not believe that someone actually worships an anthropomorphic ball. I ripped out one on the sad faces, got my tasty burrito dinner, and met up with Binkie. As a looked at my short friend, upset about an oncoming storm, I held the piece of paper to her, and calmly said: "The God of Baseball is not pleased."

Thankfully, she now has a sense of humor. She laughed before whacking me upside the head.