Making preparations for Spring Training puts a smile on my face knowing that it will not be long before I am once again sitting with my baseball friends and having yet another season of batting music. Yes, I said it, batting music. It is almost a way of marketing yourself these days as a player; you get a theme song.
Regardless of the failure to retain Adam Dunn or Josh Willingham, I get a twangy smile when a Zac Brown song is on the radio. When I hear certain songs, it pops a slide show of being behind home plate watching Adam bat up close and personal. The music relationship to the player has taken on a life of its own. I have every Kings of Leon CD in both iPod and old fashioned CD version. When a new CD is released I buy it the day it is released almost as a patriotic ritual to Ryan Zimmerman and my happiness with him being the face of the Nationals for another year.
Knowing that within a few weeks I will be seeing my baseball family puts a great happiness on my face. It is almost as though we have a self created Spring Break for working professionals who have worked hard all through the winter to indulge in our baseball addiction. Sure, we will be there for the baseball games, but we will also have beach time, pool time and great dinners and cocktails; all of which require the annual shopping and preparation.
The connection to a suburban shopping mall has never appealed to me, but today I may have figured out why they were actually created. This creation is so selfish and yet brilliant that I have concluded it that it was never planned or thought out. It is actually quite possible that subconsciously there is more to how and why they were built than the builders even know.
Shopping in the city walking in and out of varying boutiques, I see varying homeless people. It is cold, but a warmer day than we are used to in the past few weeks of this winter. I may feel warm and comfortable with just a light jacket and scarf, but I have not been chilled to the bone day after day wondering where I will get some coffee or something that is not even my choice to eat. I have approached my day coming out of a warm bed in a nice house, and freshly showered with varying choices of clothes. I chose not to eat breakfast, but that was my option.
One man on M Street always makes me smile with the creativity in his cardboard signs, usually saying, "Need internet connection. Please help." You have to smile. You know that he has not lost everything, he still has his wit. I always get him a hot cup of coffee at Starbucks and give him a prepaid gift card which will enable him to get more coffee and a sandwich of his choice. When I do this he always recognizes me, smiles and says thank you. I walk on about my business running my errands and focusing on my mission, usually; but not today.
I go in the first store looking for new swimsuits and various other things that are being put in the front windows with the anticipation of Spring. I do not flinch at the thought of spending over a hundred bucks for less than a quarter yard of spandex to barely cover those parts that would be otherwise considered nudity; its less than one baseball game on my season tickets. I go to the next store and find a great dress to wear to dinner which cost more than the monthly car payment on my first car out of college. Leisurely walking from store to store I am passing various homeless people who are registering that it is nearing sunset and they need to find somewhere warm for the night; a place to be safe, and sleep. By the time I finish my errands, it is beginning to get dark and I attempt to go home.
Going up the steps I am doing my usual "rush to the front door to bolt through and race straight to the bathroom without taking my coat off." Not today. I cannot find my keys. Bobbing from foot to foot, I turn by bag inside out emptying it on my front steps and. . . . nothing. I have locked myself out.
Starbucks to the rescue! I dash into my usual Starbucks with a mad dash to the bathroom as though it is my own house. I made it. Barely, but I did. Whew! So I order my coffee, buy a newspaper and plant myself at a warm cozy table in the corner. No one around me knows anything is wrong because judging this book by the cover it does not look like anything is. I call a locksmith, and I have to wait for three hours. The three hours is fine, I am warm; but I realize in two hours Starbucks closes. I will be sitting on the steps in the cold waiting for my locksmith, because my cell phone battery is about to die. It is beeping at me and my phone shuts down abandoning me.
In the time without my phone, and knowing that in two hours I will be out in the cold, my mind constantly races back to the people I saw sitting on the sidewalk today. They were not sitting inside any Starbucks when it was open because they could not. I start becoming overcome with the realization that I take my morning shower (or the choice not to take one) for granted. I had the ability to make phone calls and I had the ability to call someone who could come and aid the situation. I had the ability to buy coffee and sit inside and be welcome because my appearance and scent was the customer norm and not upsetting the flow of business. I had that ability, and other people do not.
Looking back at my day after getting back in my warm house and turning on my computer, I think about what a baseball game means to me. I think about how that is my indulgence and it is not even considered a treat. On a bet with Stan Kasten, I have attended every home game for the past two years in a row. I think about how while I am at baseball games in beautiful Nationals Stadium sitting directly behind home plate and having a beer with a Judge or two, someone else possibly right outside the stadium is going hungry or not having any place to go.
I have a different experience today than others did going to a local suburban shopping mall where the stores are contained in a pretty building with inside walkways. People walking and shopping and happily scurrying about in a mall are being sold the image of a perfect world. When you only see pretty, you indulge more. You have been affected by marketing psychology in more ways that even the marketing architects planned. You have had blinders put on for you whether you knew it or not.
