opera in the ballpark

My friend David and I properly paying our respects to the field.

Just about anything you do inside the confines of a ballpark will be memorable. The Italian opera, Barber of Seville, is such an example. One can hardly forget Figaro's thunderous voice amplified for all to hear inside the ballpark. Who would have thought that baseball and Italian Opera would go together so well. The Barber of Seville, the first Italian opera performed in America, was performed in New York City in 1825; very close to where the first recorded baseball game was played. Two decades later, just across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, the game of baseball was born. On this night, more than 150 years after their birth in America, baseball and opera amalgamate.




If this picture doesn't make sense to you, we need to talk.

A friend called me "Moonlight" earlier this season at a ballgame.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham: Major League ballplayer who only appeared for two innings in a major league game in 1905, and never got to bat. Graham later received his medical degree and practiced medicine for 50 years in the state of Minnesota.

So why did my friend call me "Moonlight?" Well, I could think of a few reasons. Perhaps because the character portrayal of Doc Graham in the 1989 movie, "Field of Dreams" has Doc Graham coming back to the game of baseball to live out his dream of playing major league ball. Is the nickname a sign that I need to come back to the game? Maybe. But it's going to be a little depressing when I see some little kid choking on a hotdog in the stands and know that my career is over. Talk about ultimate torture. How could W.P. Kinsella, the author of "Shoeless Joe", (the book from which the movie Field of Dreams was produced) write such a despondent reunion between Doc and the game of baseball? I can only imagine stepping onto the ballfield, magically gaining back 60 years of my life, returning to the prime age of 26, only to have that dream stolen from me because W.P. Kinsella thought it would be a nice "twist" in the plot.

So, no I don't want to be "Moonlight Graham." I don't want to be a doctor, and I sure don't want to come back to the game of baseball and have a little girl who can't digest her food properly take it all from me. So don't call me "Moonlight;" it's depressing.