OK, now that I’ve exposed my lack of team spirit – and taken more than a few hits for it, I have to own up to a related peccadillo.

I don’t enjoy the game of baseball.  I’ve sat through plenty of games and unless I was with a very social crowd that helped me through the long, slow periods, I’ve been kind of miserable.  But I love, love, love the idea of baseball, the legends, the stories, the mystique.  Especially the movies.  

Even though I’m bored stiff long before the seventh-inning stretch of a real game, I could watch marathons of baseball movies and be completely absorbed.  From “Pride of the Yankees” to “The Natural” to “A League of Their Own” to the obscure “It Happens Every Spring.”  I’m in the bag for a baseball flick.

I know it’s weird.  It seems like loving the game and loving the lore should go hand in hand.  Maybe they do for most people, although I do know a lot of sports fans who’d never sit through a film that didn’t involve multiple explosions, so who knows?

There’s just something universal in the spirit that even gets through to a sports curmudgeon like me.  I doubt that I’ll ever be allowed to forget the first time I saw “Field of Dreams.”  I’ll definitely never forget the combination of surprise tinged with disgust in my sister’s voice when the lights went up and she said, “You’re crying?”

Yes.  Yes I was.  Hard.  And what’s more, I wasn’t the only one.  All around me were women who thought it was a very nice movie and were ready to leave but were held back by men with their heads bowed, covering their eyes saying, “I just need a minute.”  I’d honestly never seen a straight guy cry at a movie and here I was in a room full of them.  Who’d’a thunk?

Years later I was at a party when we all started listing our top three of everything – bands, albums, sports teams.  When we got to films, one of the other guys included “Field of Dreams.”  I immediately asked him if it made him cry.  He looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “Yes!”  The “of course” was heavily implied.

“Field” has staying power, too.  I’m still a mess whenever I watch it.  I start tearing up as soon as Doc has to step out of the field and blubber right through to, “Dad?  Ya wanna have a catch?”  The mystery to me is that I only played catch with my dad once or twice and the last time he hit me square in the nose with the ball.  I can still feel that stunningly numb yet painful sensation spreading across my face.  It wasn’t his fault.  He wasn’t being one of those overbearing “I’ll make a man out of you yet” fathers.  He was just trying to make a connection.  Emotional, not physical.  Trouble is I’m what people like to call blind as a bat.  So once in a while I take a baseball in the schnoz.

Since then fathers and sons and baseball have become a sure fire way to prime my waterworks.  I realized that when I went to see “Frequency” – which isn’t even about baseball – but it’s got a father and a son and there’s a baseball montage at the end.  Before I knew it, my vision was blurred, my nose was running and I was making all kinds of little whimpering sounds while I tried to keep myself from all out sobbing.  Once again I was with my sister, and once again I heard those familiar words when the lights came up:  “You’re crying?”

Yes I was.  And I expect to keep on doing it.  I kind of like it.