My friend Jane once shared the expression that baseball is 20 minutes of excitement crammed into three hours. Like most people I know whose eyes glaze over at the thought of the game, the end of the 2024 Major League Baseball season a few weeks ago was not a source of sadness for her.

But it was for me.

I spent most nights this past summer watching the Los Angeles Dodgers. Through the magic of the MLB app (and $75), I was able to see all of their games live or on replay. If I didn’t watch the game, I tracked the statistics on my phone the following morning, usually before I got out of bed.

Following the Dodgers this closely was a relatively new phenomenon for me. The New York Yankees have always been my team. When I was 10, I even wrote a book about their 1978 season, which culminated in a World Series victory over the Dodgers. Many of the lines in my book were plagiarized from Sports Illustrated, but since I didn’t sell any copies, it wasn’t a problem. 

If you had bumped into me in the summer of 1978, I would’ve happily bored you with statistics of my favorite players–Ron “Louisiana Lightning” Guidry, Chris Chambliss (who signed my baseball mitt at a local car dealership), Thurman Munson, and of course, Reggie Jackson. 

A highlight of that summer was the playoff game on the last day of the season that pitted the Yankees against the Boston Red Sox. I watched it with my next door neighbors, my tackle football mates, and we all lost our minds when a terrible Yankee hitter named Bucky Dent (or Bucky F*cking Dent, as many Red Sox fans call him) smacked a home run to win the game.

This summer, as I watched both the Yankees and Dodgers have successful seasons, I hoped for another World Series between New York and Los Angeles. Though I spent most of my time following the Dodgers, I expected to root for the Yankees if the two teams played head to head. To my surprise, when my wish came true and the World Series started, I found myself rooting hard … for the Dodgers.

Did this make me a turncoat? A traitor? A jerk?

Maybe. 

If so, I’d like to place part of the blame on the Washington Nationals. I moved to Washington in 2001 and gradually became a fan of the adopted hometown team. Each season, I went to at least a few games. One of the best days of 2019 was going to Nationals Park for a Game 7 Watch Party the night they won the World Series. 

My feelings about the team abruptly shifted in 2021 when they traded two of their best players to the Dodgers in July, the first of several “business decisions” that effectively dismantled the squad. Partly out of spite, I decided to watch the ex-Nationals’ games instead of the Nationals. I discovered that a couple of players I liked from teams I hated (the Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves) were now playing for the Dodgers. 

I also found that watching the Dodgers brought back fond memories of the late 1970s, when I was at the height of my fandom, and of my charmed childhood.

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I understand why the large majority of my friends and family find baseball unbearably boring. A Wall Street Journal study showed that players are standing around doing nothing during 90% of the average baseball game.

But for me, the sport is not just about how much action there is on the field, or even following a specific team. I love it because it’s tied in with so many happy memories.

I’m not just watching the game in front of me when I watch baseball, though I’m doing that too. I live alone and work from home in the summers, and baseball gives structure to many of my evenings. 

It’s also a continuing drama, with storylines and characters. In the same way that many of us get attached to famous people we’ll never meet (and feel sad when a television series is over, for example), I come to care about players and their stories.

This season I came just short of falling in love with Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese superstar in his first season with the Dodgers. I stopped what I was doing every time he came up to bat, read dozens of articles about him, and followed him on Instagram. My feed is full of video clips of Shohei, his wife, and his dog Decoy. He became my Taylor Swift, someone I watched with unadulterated joy. 

I came to admire Ohtani not just for his tremendous athletic skills, but also for how he conducted himself. He was meticulous in his preparation for games. He was respectful to teammates and opposing players, tipping his helmet to the umpire and the opposing manager and catcher before his first at bat in each game. He was at least outwardly humble. 

His demeanor brought back fond memories of the year I spent in Japan in the late 1990s. I saw in Shohei Ohtani many of the qualities that had impressed me 25 years ago when I worked with Japanese people of all ages.

He is expected to be named the National League Most Valuable Player this week. If he is, I will feel proud, as if I helped him win the award.

The Summer of Shohei aside, my most happy baseball memories connect the game to my family.

My parents’ first date was at the Polo Grounds in New York, at a Chicago Cubs-New York Mets game. The easy conversation they enjoyed that day led to 59 years of marriage and three kids. 

When each of us turned 10, they took us away for a weekend by ourselves. For my “10 Trip,” my parents took me to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Many years later, when I had a son, I took him on a “10 Trip” to Cleveland to see the Yankees play the Indians. 

He’s 22 now, but I still cherish the many hours I spent watching him play baseball, from the time he was four through his freshman year in high school. He loved playing, and I loved watching his games.

A line in an article I read recently resonated with me: “Baseball binds generations like no other sport.” I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but it seems about right for me.