When baseball mattered (to me)

It’s interesting to see how meaningless the World Series has become in my life. I barely watched an inning of this year’s Fall Classic. But there was a time when I wouldn’t miss a game. In fact, when I was a boy, my grades would fall dramatically during those days.
It was the time of daytime World Series, when I used to get home just in time for the start of the game. It was the days of the Orioles (my favorite team then) and Frank Robinson, Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson, Elrod Hendricks, Jim Palmer. It was the days of the Big Red Machine with Tony Perez, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose. Of the Pirates and Clemente, Stargell and Sanguillen. The World Series was a wonderful event before TV ratings decided that games would begin at 8pm and made it impossible for kids to see the whole game. Suddenly it didn’t matter anymore.