July 17, Chatham

I have now been rejected by ore people in Chatham than every other park combined. I was rejected by two more, making my total Chatham rejections 5, everywhere else 2. But I cannot blame the people, as I tend to only approach those who are alone or in groups such that they are not with any children, and a lot of times when people are alone, there's the chance that they're either alone because they came alone to watch a game, and there's the chance that they're alone because they don't want to talk to people.

Before this game, I'd changed my last question from "Baseball Is..." to "Do you have a favorite baseball euphemism?" That is to say, a baseball term commonly used outside of a baseball context. After one interview, I went back to the original question since it seemed people were not coming up with anything. Oh well. Live and learn.

I started by talking to an older gentleman in center field who was a life-long Red Sox fan and enjoyed the Cape Cod Baseball League as the purest form of a pure game.

The next man I spoke to was a Yankees fan from Ft. Myers, Florida. He actually discussed the regional aspects of baseball. He said that baseball is a northeastern game, primarily, and that people take in the game differently elsewhere. In the northeast, we're obsessed with baseball. In the south, they're all about football. (Perhaps the hard-hitting nature of it to go with the hard-hitting nature of the southern culture?) Listening to him talk about the pacing of the game of baseball that southerners tend to find boring, I couldn't help be struck by the fact that the fast moving cities of Boston and New York are obsessed with the slowest-paced game in all of sport. (Sorry, golfers, but I still question if golf is a sport...)

I then spoke with a man from Florida who'd lived all across the country at various times in his life. He told me of his first game as a kid, between the Cleveland Indians and the Philadelphia Athletics. At this point, I had become a fantastic conversationalist. The interview was probably 5 minutes, and I probably spoke with him for another 10 about New Orleans (as he was sitting in a Tulane chair, the alma mater of my ex-girlfriend), New York City (where he'd worked), Cape Cod, and Florida.

Directly across the street from the field is the fire/EMT/police station, and every now and then, the firemen stand outside. I decided I'd end my night talking to one of them. The one who ultimately talked to me on tape was a Cape Cod native who'd left for a number of years and returned. He had a degree in economics from Hamilton College and spent a year in Boston at a desk job. He decided he hated a desk job and moved back to the Cape to become a fire fighter. We spoke for about 5 minutes about baseball and then I spoke with him for another 25 minutes about his experience as a fireman, his desk job life, and Cape Cod in the winter.

The firemen told me to knock on the police station attached and get one of them to speak to me, but I decided I'd wait until next time I'm in Chatham. It was already 9 o'clock and I had to eat something and also had somewhere to be.