Halloween is a time when the scariest creatures lurk not in graveyards, but in front of televisions broadcasting the World Series.
First there's the armchair baseball coach. Slithering from under his rock once a year to wax idiotic about the World Series, this Descartes of the diamond is quick with the advice and slow with the wit. Regardless of what transpires on the field, he'd have done it differently.
Why, he'd get out there and show those Red Sox what's what, if he weren't sitting 1,200 miles away with macaroni and cheese stains on his shirt. Armchair coach usually subsists primarily on chicken fingers and about romanticizes high school way too much.
The fantasy baseball dork is almost as bad as the armchair coach. Scarily enthralled in every element of the game, fantasy baseball dork blurs the lines of reality as he mines the minutiae of America's favorite pastime. He's less likely to annoy you with stories of what might have been, and more likely to have more signed balls than dates. He's around 28 years old and keeps his mountains of sports memorabilia in his childhood room, where he still lives.
Then there's the former athlete who never quite made the mark. Quick to remind you of the six hitless innings he pitched against Jonesboro Heating and Air in 1993, his brushes with major league fame have been as unstoried as they have been rare. He plays intramural slow pitch softball with a $100 glove and professional cleats, and predicts the next play on television as though he's Nostradamus. Always the loudest and dirtiest player at the post-softball game Pizza Hut roundtable, he can quote 1979 RBI stats but can't remember his wife's birthday.
But I kid my fellow baseball freaks. I love the game as much as they do. And heck, I'm as nerdy as the next guy.
Something weird happens to baseball fans in October that doesn't happen to fans of other sports. Somehow the ball game gets in our blood. Whether you're that guy who almost made it, is playing right now, or will never slip on a glove, baseball is something special.
Greater writers have said it better and in fewer words, but there's always that certain feeling in the air that greatness awaits the next pitch.
We've seen glimpses of it this year, with broken curses, bloody ankles and grand slams. And when all the arguments have been made about ticket costs, inflated salaries and overblown egos, we baseball fans still get that feeling in our gut when it's the bottom of the ninth, with two on, and the count is full. There's nothing else like it.
