The (Third) First Sign of Spring

I’m watching the first televised game of the Chicago Cubs on WGN (a preseason game with the White Sox) as is my custom. Also as is my custom I’m drinking beer and eating a bag of salted-in-the-shell peanuts. I’ll drink some more beer and eat another bag of peanuts in three weeks on opening day of the regular season. I’m not sure when or how this custom began, but it’s been going on for at least a dozen years. When I was teaching full-time I generally was finished in class by early afternoon, so was able to come home and watch the games. I recall at least on one occasion letting my class go half an hour early so I could make the start of a first game telecast.

I’m not necessarily a Cubs fan, not necessarily a fan of any particular club. My baseball allegiances have always been determined by proximity. When I was in my early teens, I was a fan of the Milwaukee Braves because the Wichita Braves were a minor league franchise of the Milwaukee team, and my little team was also the Braves and our uniforms were facsimiles of the major and minor league clubs’ uniforms. So I was a Braves fan. There was only one baseball game on TV each week (The Game of the Week) and it was only occasionally a Braves game, so most of my following was done via the box scores in the newspaper. When I was in college I was only 30 miles from Kansas City, we got Kansas City TV and radio stations, so I was able to follow the Royals, and for five or six years in the ‘70s became a Royals fan. For one season I lived in Minneapolis, just 10 minutes from the old Twins’ park in Bloomington, so for that year I was a Twins fan. When I got to Iowa City in the late ‘70s I could get all of the Cubs games on WGN TV or radio (back when Harry Caray was in his prime drunkenness) and so became a Cubs fan. But again, not a fan in the usual sense of the term, more of a casual fan, a proximate fan, a tele-fan. A fan that needs some reason to bide away an afternoon drinking beer and eating a bag of peanuts.