Fish Fanaticism

There has always been a hat.

The first one was a teal adjustable hat I bought at Woolworth’s. I wasn’t a fan of the black stripes stitched into it so the cap rarely left my closet.

There have been others, adjustable hats, warm-up hats, vintage hats and more. But, through the years, I have always had a Marlins hat.

The caps serve as my connection to a team and a sport that captivates my attention only long enough to elicit frustration. For 20 seasons my relationship with baseball recedes and flows like slow waves to shore.

On occasion there is a high tide and the Marlins are having a successful season. In others the sea is gone, revealing shells and other undesirables that are masked by a winning season.

Through it all, there has always been a baseball cap.

It’s a relationship born out of proximity, and a lust for leaning my baseball fanaticism on some team I could relate with. Atlanta appeared to be an alternative universe to an inquisitive baseball fan in Southwest Florida. Miami felt just as foreign, but at least it was in Florida.

Spring training in Sarasota brought all the stars to me. But once April came, the players and teams were only as tangible as the television or newspaper box scores would allow.

That hideous teal cap made Charlie Hough, Benito Santiago and Jeff Conine more than names in a box score. Even if I was never closer than a box television in my bedroom, the Marlins seemed to be a team there for my own summer entertainment.

A collection of errors has hindered any ability to see this routinely mediocre team in person. But, the hat has always been there. In the good years and the bad, the hat has been a tether to a team teetering along in the National League.

Every April my optimism would heighten that this would be the year. They would flirt with my emotions for five weeks, only to go on a losing spell, stinking like rotten citrus as May drifts toward June. Father’s Day would be the barometer for the rest of the season, saving cranks like myself from suffering through summer’s dog days in the fabulous Florida sun.

I was never too good at baseball. My swing had a hitch in it. My throwing motion was never consistent. Plus, I always took circuitous routes to fielding my position.

Personal shortcomings never hindered my Marlin-inspired mania.

Mr. Marlin winning the All-Star MVP award in ’95 was the highlight of my summer. Meeting Charles Johnson six years later was such an experience I nearly hyperventilated. Little compares to dressing up as Marlins player — hat and all — for a Halloween party days after Craig Counsell floated home.

It’s been nearly a decade since Josh Beckett tagged out Posada to shutout the vaunted Yankees. Since then, there have been occasions, large and small, to proudly wear the hat of a team that defiantly represents Florida — whether it’s the booms, the busts or the steady promises for future growth.

As I’ve grown up with the Marlins, the hats have changed. My fanaticism has never wavered, even when the team is floundering in fourth place.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Is it picking nits to call winners “World Champions”?

When something does not make sense to me, I usually make a funny face and ask a question: sometimes to the closest person near, or to no one in particular.

Otis Nixon ending the 1992 World Series with a bunt was one of those instances. Three weeks away from my eighth birthday, I asked my dad why he would bunt since the probability of him reaching base was very low.

The Braves were the closest thing to a major league baseball team in Southwest Florida at the time, so by almost obligation I rooted for them. (It didn’t hurt that the headmaster at my school — Edwin Gleason, a genial gentleman with an English accent — was an ardent Braves fan, who had a child-like smile on his face when molasses-slow Sid Bream beat Barry Bonds’ throw from left field earlier that month for the Braves to even make the Series.)

As Toronto danced in the infield of Fulton-County Stadium I sat there in my room as disgusted as a seven-year old who never played organized baseball could be.

Some time during one of my periods of stewing and snarling at no one in particular, my mother must have mentioned the fact that Toronto were not the “World Champions” as many broadcasters and newspapers reported.

With the Texas Rangers or the St. Louis Cardinals two wins away from baseball immortality, I cannot help but recall those consecutive Octobers where the team I wanted to win didn’t, and I sought for every excuse or plausible explanation for why it didn’t happen.

But back in 1992, I thought maybe there was some way Atlanta had won the series. Instead, her point was that it was impossible to designate the champion of a league featuring only American and Canadian teams “World Champions.” (Just the look on my headmaster’s face in the opening weeks of November was enough to convince me that the Braves indeed did lose for a second straight fall.)

Every morning the next year, I would borrow the Sports page of the Sarasota-Herald Tribune in the hope that someone had knocked Toronto out of first place. When Chicago faced Toronto in the ALCS that fall, I of course rooted for the White Sox, not solely because I despised Toronto, but in part because I went to a few White Sox spring training games earlier that year.

When Toronto won the World Series again, we were in Denver for a family trip. I missed Joe Carter’s Series-ending home run because after driving from Florida to Colorado with three smart-alecks my parents wanted to grab food at a decent restaurant.

Again the topic of World Champions came up.

On that cool Saturday night I was more annoyed that I missed such a dramatic baseball game, but as we walked down the street toward our hotel I again asked how the Blue Jays could be World Champions. For all we knew there might be a team somewhere else in the world better than them. At least that was my hope because I really, really didn’t like Toronto.

I was already aware that the 1904 “World’s Series” was called off because John McGraw thought his Giants were the best team in the world, so there was no point in playing the Boston Americans because it was a formality. But then, as is the case now, when something does not make sense I continue to ask questions until an answer satisfies my curiosity.

My dad said that was the way things have always been. He didn’t know why it was called the World Series. My mom said they should come up with another name. Neither answer was good enough, so I kept pressing for a sufficient answer.

The answer I sought never came, at least that October. Though the Braves eventually won the World Series two years later, so much had changed. My parents had more pressing concerns than the silly questions of a 10-year old with a smart mouth, I no longer attended the school where Mr. Gleason was the headmaster and most depressing of all, I was committed the perpetually hot-and-cold Florida Marlins.

The Braves mini-dynasty was proof that part of baseball’s mystery is not its timelessness, but the fact games always leaves us with unanswered questions.