Baseball On My Brain

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write…I’m not going to try and piece this together all nice and pretty; it’s going to be what’s on my brain right now.

If you’re a baseball fan, and I mean someone who actually cares about the game and wants to learn about the many facets of baseball, I’d seriously recommend a membership to SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. The subscription to their e-mail list is worth the price of membership alone. Case in point – I was reading the daily digest just a few minutes ago, when a discussion of the Western Baseball League came up.

There was a reference to the Sonoma County Crushers, the only team to play in the league in each of the eight years of its existence. While that may not seem like something worthy of a blog post, it is – because when I was a junior in college, I took a class called something to the effect of “The American Dream and the American Pastime: Baseball As a Cultural Mirror of America.” (My apologies to Prof. Rob Elias if I got the title wrong.)

But part of what we did in that class was go to ballgames, including one at Rohnert Park Stadium, home of the aforementioned Crushers.

Jump back to the SABR e-mail list I was reading, and guess what’s now on the site of Rohnert Park Stadium?

A (insert expletive here) Wal-Mart.

Just like Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium can come down, so can a small community ballpark like Rohnert Park Stadium. And having been to all three…I’m a bit more pissed to learn that Rohnert Park is gone more than the other two. They’re both great – but for different reasons.

A bit of my own baseball history is gone.