My Turn: What baseball taught me

I mark each year with the baseball season. February means that pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training. March is when I prepare for my fantasy baseball draft. Early April is opening day. July brings the All-Star Game and the point when each team assesses its chances: Do we have the pitching, the offense, to really compete this season?

As the calendar counts down to the July 31 trading deadline, teams act on those appraisals: Should we add talent or trade our star for some prospects? Labor Day marks the stretch run and early October means that the playoffs are beginning.

Finally, as my kids are putting the finishing touches on their Halloween costumes, the World Series champion is crowned.

While I am a casual fan of football and basketball, I am a voracious consumer of baseball. In addition to attending games and following the sport on TV, I love nonfiction that provides insight into historic teams or eras. I’ve even written baseball trivia questions for the Hall of Fame’s official trivia app.

It’s been like this for as long as I can remember — and baseball has taught me a lot.

Baseball taught me economics. I started collecting baseball cards in 1976, just as they started to spike in value. Suddenly, grown men were ransacking their parents’ basements to find their old Mickey Mantle rookie cards. I kept immaculate care of my collection, and I attended memorabilia shows with my friends — I thought I was investing. But I wasn’t the only one in the gold rush. Millions of people were stocking up, and the card companies printed so many cards that supply overwhelmed demand, and the market crashed. Today my cards aren’t worthless, but pretty close.

Baseball taught me about the art of negotiation. Every year, my family’s vacations weren’t about sitting on a beach: We packed them with sightseeing in Boston or Philadelphia or San Francisco. But I also needed my baseball fix. So, when my dad would announce where we would be going, I would grab the master Major League Baseball schedule and report back with crucial information about when that city’s baseball team would be home. Invariably, they would bend the family schedule and meet my demands, and this is how I first got to see historic parks like Candlestick and Fenway.

Baseball taught me math. When I was 9, calculating earned run average was more important than my homework.

Baseball taught me not to take winners for granted. After the Yankees won the World Series in 1996, my friends and I got a Friday-night season ticket package that also gave us access to postseason games. We went to three World Series, including the clincher against the Braves in 1999, and the game when Roger Clemens threw a bat at Mike Piazza in 2000. Recently, the Yankees have been unable to match that run of success. While some fans get impatient with the front office or players, I’m still able to savor that late 1990s dynasty. I know that championship runs like the late ’90s Yankees rarely happen, and we got to see one up close.

Today the season begins with the Cardinals taking on the Pirates. This means that spring is here, the days are getting longer and the weather is getting warmer. And the Yanks will be on the radio when I get into my car at the Massapequa railroad station each evening. The rhythms of my favorite sport will take me all the way to October.