Eleven o'clock, tick tock

It was a dark and stormy night.

Actually, I don't know if it was. It was either 3am or 3pm - I can't remember which - and it was San Diegoish California in January 1977. I was born.

Surely somewhere in my little Tin Drum mind at the moment I took my first breath I knew I was destined for the heartbreak that comes with being a baseball fan. I should have avoided it. I did it anyway. I took the plunge, took a chance on being a fan, even when all I could see was light and darkness. I knew there was something else, something more than black and white - there was red, bright red, brighter than all of the joy in the world. Yet I have felt the nirvana only once in my life, a very young, naive, probably unappreciative life. I was thirteen years old. It was 1990, practically another lifetime.

I tore out my next tickets in my Nats package today and gasped in horror when I saw how many were left. Six. Six of twenty in the best birthday present ever. Six shiny blue tickets with the colorful baseball logos, Game 64 out of 81, then 67, 69, 71, 73, and 79. My heart is breaking as it does every year when I realize summer is dying, when I notice the sky is completely dark at eight o'clock and I check the standings to see the Reds are once again out of the race, that the whole season was once again for naught. My heart breaks as I think about the impending autumn, the cold, cruel wind whipping through the empty trees, and the darkness, oh the darkness, coming out of the office at 5pm to a dead day, reminding me that life is passing far too quickly, and I am gasping for air as I fail to keep up.

I've said it before, but it's so true - that shirt they have out there that says "Baseball is Life" really is the essence of being. Summer, that season when as kids we were totally free, when we climbed trees and rode our bikes to the baseball card shop and ate butterscotch dipped cones from the Dairy Queen, when we caught lightening bugs and put them in a jar, when going to the pool was just about the best thing you could do aside from a baseball game. Baseball is summer, summer is life, and I can hear the ticking louder and louder and louder now. Game 64. Game 67. Game 69. Game 71. Game 73. Game 79.

Game 162.

The emptiness of autumn for all but a few lucky fans.

I remember back in March when I first received the ticket package. People who had them before complained they weren't in a fancy box. I thought my booklet with the tear out tickets was the best damn thing I ever had. I have one full page left. It nearly makes me cry that it's the only one, that my beautiful, beautiful book has but one page remaining. That summer is almost gone.

I gasp for summer air. It's getting tough to breathe.