During the same hour MLB commissioner Rob Manfred declared that major-league games would be canceled due to the impasse between the league owners and its players union — around 5:24 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday — everything was somehow serendipitously right with Indiana Baseball.

It was a saccharine day in Bloomington, a sunny and comparably scorching 67°F mark for the 1st day of March. Fans flocked to Bart Kaufman Field in abnormally high numbers for a 4 p.m. weekday pitch against Miami (Ohio), this being their first opportunity to see the Hoosiers in person since March of 2020 due to COVID restrictions.

The 710-day wait was over.

IU freshman Luke Hayden, a pitching ace whose star was found just 6.7 miles from “The Bart” at nearby Edgewood High School, was making his first start on the mound for a team he certainly must have dreamed of playing for.

He threw the first “first” pitch of his IU career at 4:03 p.m. Forty-three more pitches and a few minutes later, he had pocketed two shutout innings and three cool strikeouts to the sun-kissed crowd’s delight.

First-baseman Brock Tibbitts got in on the action too, smacking a 3-run homer in the 2nd inning that seemed to threaten the architecture of the Unitarian Universalist Church across Fee Lane, and added another soaring home run in the 5th for good measure.

The Hoosiers, which had entered Tuesday’s contest with a lowly, frustrating 1-5 start to the season, were beating up on the RedHawks, 10-2.

The matinee game was also the first time IU fans could purchase alcohol at a baseball game – an announcement made Monday afternoon – and it was more common to see attendees carrying the maximum allotment of two cans rather than one.

The combination of baseball’s essential, if not romantic aspects – beautiful weather, lovable players, dazzling plays, a winning home team, and of course, cold beer – worked together to weave history into the evening: Tuesday’s attendance of 1,984 at Bart Kaufman Field smashed 2016’s previous home-opener record of 1,609, according to Greg Campbell, IU’s assistant director of strategic communications.

If only for Tuesday night, the Hoosiers’ cup runneth over at nearly the exact time when Major League Baseball announced a drought – professional baseball’s annually anticipated Opening Day ceremonies will not happen as planned on March 31, and that regular-season games would be canceled indefinitely until the league owners and the players association agree to terms.

The MLB and college baseball are surging in two different directions, and IU’s performance Tuesday illustrated the highs of college baseball’s cultural crest in Indiana, a state with many regional tribes of “fans” (Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Cardinals), but no major-league team for the Hoosier State to call its own, despite a “great effort” from the prospective Indianapolis Arrows in 1985.

After the game – a whopping 15-2 IU win inspired by another Hoosier dinger by catcher Matthew Ellis and some opportunistic late-game base-running – I asked Indiana head coach Jeff Mercer if his players were considering how the shifting weight of baseball’s fandom might affect college baseball, and as such, their attitudes around the game:

“I don’t know if it’s a topic we’ve discussed as much, but you can definitely feel a sense of excitement about college baseball in general,” he said, before comparing it to his time as a player for Dayton and Wright State. 

“Every year since I’ve played, which isn’t that long ago, college baseball has really exploded in popularity, and I think there’s multiple reasons. You look at the level of competition, college baseball has improved transcendentally. … In the past 5 or 10 years, with the caliber of players, the caliber of the game, everybody has turf fields now…you’re really able to go out and compete at a high level, and that’s an exciting brand of baseball.”

IU’s skipper then tied it together succinctly:

“If Major League Baseball is not going to get it together, then I guess college baseball can help fill that void a little bit,” he said. “That’s a great thing for everybody in our sport.”

This is SportsCenter

The win improved the Hoosiers to 2-5. The RedHawks fell to 3-4. Indiana will travel to Springfield, Missouri, this weekend for a three-game series at Missouri State. IU’s next home game is scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, against Cincinnati.

Getting Into the Spirit(s)

Whether it’s simply the novelty in being new, or the inherent attraction in being America’s favorite vice, folks on social media were immediately curious to learn more about IU’s rollout of alcoholic beverages for baseball and softball games this spring.

Alcohol sales, with the exception of a few hospitality suites across the IU’s sports and event pantheon, were prohibited for sale to the public at Hoosier sports events until the 2021 football season this past fall. 

Naturally, these slow-drip rollouts have lead to sustained anticipation to the thirstier fans among Hoosier Nation, so I’d like to publicly offer a de facto beer menu, based on my personal observation around Bart Kaufman Stadium on Tuesday evening:

• $8: Bud Light (pint), Coors Light (pint), Naked Barrel Hard Seltzer (12-ounce can)
• $9: Upland Dragonfly IPA (pint), Upland Wheat Ale (pint)

These are also the exact same beer choices and prices I witnessed from general vendors when IU football hosted No. 8 Cincinnati on September 18, 2021 – an 88-degree day of direct, blistering sunlight – as well as a few other games from the private bars of Touchdown Terrace in the South End Zone of Memorial Stadium. 

I include this information to suggest, with casual empirical observation, that IU Athletics maintains a consistent pricing structure for alcohol across all sorts that might sell it, and refrains from price-gouging based on the importance of the matchup. There’s not really an “Ethics in Beer Prices” investigative journalism beat, but believe you me, I’d be more than happy to take that job, should someone pay me for it.

Okay, that’s enough about beer. I’m getting thirsty.

Scraps from the Notebook:

• Footlong hot dogs are $8.00 at Bart Kaufman Field concession stands, while standard-length hot dogs are $5. A pretzel with cheese is $6, but a plain pretzel is $5. Hamburgers and cheeseburgers, strangely, are the same price, at $7 each.
• The first “please drink responsibly” public address announcement came at the end of the first inning, just 14 minutes after the first pitch, at 4:17 p.m. Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer” played afterwards.
• BTN+ broadcast commentator Hank Joseph speaking to the depth of baseball fans’ emotions behind the pending MLB lockout: “I don’t think ‘upset’ would be anywhere near the right term to use.”

Playing by the Rules

Before I go too much further with this first installment of “From Left Field,” I’d like to take a moment to spell out my ethical consideration in writing these features.

My original plan, as a common IU sports fan, was to attend baseball and softball games from the stands and take notes from my seat. I’d use my “CrimsonCard” ID, which lets me into games for free as an adjunct instructor, and write what comes to mind. The resulting piece you read now would be a byproduct of that.

I reached out to the people in charge of IU baseball’s media access (as mentioned earlier) and got a receptive nod for credentials that let me into the press booth on Tuesday. This offer is prospectively open for future games, should this arrangement work out. I’m appreciative to have a privilege of access that many aspiring writers cannot simply ask for.

That said, I did take some time to step out of the press box and sit in general admission with the proletariat fan: I popped by first base, third base, just behind catcher, and all the way out to the right field picnic section to see what people were saying, in order to get a compellingly authentic experience. Some quotes from these illustrative scenes may return later on.

The important thing is this: I’m not writing this for anyone but me. I’m not currently employed by any other media publication. I don’t get paid by the article, nor the click, nor the retweet. I don’t have a Patreon, and I’m not trying to trip upwards into publication by a mass media outlet. I’m writing for writing’s sake over here: You can’t fake it and you can’t buy it. I’m talking about the real goddamned deal.

But you’re welcome to read it, of course.

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-moose

PS: If you are the sort of person who feels like pitching some funds my way in the name of more adventure and spirited writing, I do have Venmo and PayPal accounts. Some folks are crazy enough to become an official WordPress supporter. It’s whatever. Words are free. I just hope you liked a few of mine today.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. ⁠— The job industry is a gong-show, nuclear annihilation is back on our doorsteps, and Year 3 of the 2019 pandemic has crept in through the back door like a guilty drunk.

…So, who’d like to chat a little baseball?

I’ve never claimed to have any of the answers. And if the answers were easy, we’d probably have them by now. But I would like to announce a new writing project called “From Left Field,” where I ruminate on the social issues du-jour (in whatever hellish format they may arrive) while watching America’s pastime.

This spring, Major League Baseball seems likely to be locked out, which is its own jar of worms. But I have the privilege of living (and working) in a Big Ten town, which means I can see the Indiana Hoosiers baseball and softball teams for free when they play at home.

“The main idea is this,” as I described it to IU baseball’s communication director, “In lieu of traditional game coverage, I would like to occasionally cover the IU baseball team in search of metaphor and anecdote that illustrates much of what’s on people’s minds right now — which might be anything from a particularly poetic performance from a player who needed a big game, or say, fans embracing college baseball with the MLB facing an imminent lockout, or returning to outdoor games post-pandemic, etc.”

I do plan to check out some softball as well. As a matter of transparency, I just haven’t gotten hold of their communications director yet.

What’s most interesting about this all is that I didn’t even grow up a baseball fan. It took some convincing. I didn’t grow up in a state with an MLB team, and my father outright hated the casual, often unserious tone of the game. “They run a little and then they need a break,” he’d argue.

Alas, once I started working the sports desk for a newspaper, I learned about box scores and bullpens and bunts and balks and bloops and all sorts of seemingly made-up words. And though I won’t claim to be a cultish fanatic of either game, I do see the romanticism in baseball and softball. There’s much time to think, and with time to think comes time to feel. And that’s where the heavy lifting of this life is done: our feelings.

Oh well, I won’t keep you much longer. There’s words to be found, and today’s the first home IU baseball game of the year: a 4 p.m. tilt vs. Miami (Ohio). It’s time to stare into the great void and see what stares back.

If there are topics you’d like me to consider for the “From Left Field” series, please use the suggestion box in the top right corner.

Batter up!

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-moose