By: Chelsea Ladd Follow me on my Twitter and Instagram accounts.
When people ask me, what baseball means to me, it isn’t a short answer or a cliche response. The truth is, I would never be the woman I am today without baseball. It is not just a nine-inning game for me that ends with the final hit or out. Someone once told me that baseball does not owe them anything, but they owe everything to baseball, and I have never related to something more.
My relationship with baseball began on August 27, 1991, on my hometown hospital’s labor and delivery floor. My mother was giving birth to her rainbow baby. My father was a nervous wreck and trying to keep his worries at bay by watching his favorite MLB team, the Atlanta Braves, all while sitting right beside my mother. It is a long-running joke in my family now, 30 years later, because my father kept asking my mother for one more inning. Meanwhile, I had other plans, and when the nurse came into the room, she asked my future coach and best friend if he was ready for me.
My father says he won twice that night. First, he became a girl dad, and his Braves beat the Montreal Expos, 3-2, with 15,806 fans in attendance at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. His love for his daughter and his Braves never faltered. In photographs of my first birthday, my father beamed with his Braves hat on the top of his dark hair.
Although it took me a few years to fall in love with the game, I never missed a game on television with my father. It was our thing. When I was around the age of seven, I began playing t-ball. Don’t get me wrong, I was a girly girl in my life, so the most important thing to me was the jersey and the flowers growing in the outfield. My dad on other hand immediately went out and bought a left-handed glove for me.
My t-ball career lasted three games. My mom worked nights at the hospital and had to leave early during my fourth game. As an only child with attachment issues, I walked, no – I ran off the field. Despite loving the game and watching A League of Their Own until my VHS tape eventually stopped working, I would not play again until I was nine.
That same year, I fell in love with a catcher from the Los Angeles Dodgers, my all-time favorite, Mike Piazza. I remember my dad buying a Dodgers hat for me. I wore it with pride until I found out Piazza was traded to the Florida Marlins and then quickly to the New York Mets.
My dad, the Braves fan, was not thrilled when I announced that I liked the Mets because Piazza was now with them. So, he pushed his fandom pride to the side and bought us both matching black Piazza Mets jerseys. That jersey was everything to me until I grew out of it. My father’s jersey currently hangs in my closet.
I started playing softball in 2001, and my life changed completely. Yes, I know, softball is not baseball, but at this time, little girls who played softball did not have the coverage or the hype for the game, so we relied on falling in love with baseball. So, while most kids my age watched Nickelodeon or Disney, I was constantly watching ESPN and Baseball Tonight. It became my dream to work in baseball and softball.
I continued to play softball, my dad as my coach and my mom as my number one fan. I started in the outfield, loathed it, and begged to be my team’s catcher. You must understand that my pleads caused a stir in my house. At the time, I was turning 10 years old and the most petite girl on my team in size. I was fragile looking and left-handed. Finally, after multiple attempts at convincing my dad to let me, he gave in, and I became a catcher, just like my favorite player, Mike Piazza.
My catching career lasted from 2001 until 2003 when I was messing around in middle school softball with our pitchers. Then, my coach, someone other than my dad, noticed that I was not bad at pitching, and there were not many lefties in our area. So, she told me that I was done with catching and needed to pitch. I remember that car ride going back home from that weekend tournament and sobbing. I loved catching. However, as we got older, the girls were still a lot bigger than me, and safety was a concern for everyone – except me, of course I thought I was invincible.
The game was not just a bond for my parents and me, but also with my grandfather. He relied on oxygen and never really could tolerate the summer heat to see my games, but he never missed a practice or game. So, everyone knew his van, the blue van that sat out behind the outfield or as close as he could get to the field to see me.
My grandpa passed away a week after his 70th birthday and a week after I had made the high school softball team as a seventh grader. Our last conversations were about how proud he was and how he thought it hilarious that the team needed to order me a new uniform because none would fit me. I will never forget that last week before he went into the hospital. I asked him what number I should ask for, he joked and said 34 because he was born in 1934, and it was a decent number. Little did he know, I would carry that number with me for the rest of my life, from my softball number to my lucky number, and now to my new baseball website coming out this year.
When I returned to softball after he passed away, my coach asked me to come to her vehicle to get my new uniform. She and my dad had talked about the number, and I never knew it, but she presented me with the number 34. I cried on the way home and knew that he would always be with me.
I continued to watch and love baseball while playing softball. We went to independent baseball games in Evansville, Indiana, and minor league games in Louisville, Kentucky. My first Major League game was in July 2005, at the old Busch Stadium with the Rockies in town.
I went on to play at the high school level from seventh grade until I walked off the field during my senior year – something I will forever regret, but at the time, it felt right. Unfortunately, despite offers and possibilities, I did not play college softball due to skin cancer.
I was diagnosed at the age of nineteen, and it changed how I looked at things. Over the years, I got married in 2012 and went through literal hell and back before getting a divorce in 2018. I had lost myself along the way. I lost my love for the game of baseball and even softball at that point. I kept up with the occasional game and checked out World Series games, but it was not magical like it was for as a kid.
In March 2019, I came home from work to my parents, both distraught and in tears. Our family dog, the dog I had for seven years that became my best friend and got me through my divorce, was in critical condition. Moments after I got home, the vet called, and he had passed. It was the anniversary of his “gotcha” day, and seeing my dad bury him in our backyard was something I will never forget seeing.
For some reason, I had decided to buy tickets to see the Cardinals and Mets play in St. Louis before my dog Kirk had passed. So, when the tickets came in the mail two days after his passing, I knew baseball was still there for me even if I had given up on it and my dream of working in baseball a long time ago.
I used baseball to grieve and find myself again from that moment. Little did I know that baseball was ready to give me the life I always wanted. The game was magical again. A world that felt so black and white was bright and colorful for me. So, in the summer of 2019, my parents and I went to Busch Stadium four times to see the Mets, Braves, Diamondbacks, and Brewers.
It was so rewarding to witness my dad finally see his favorite team play in person. He was like a bit of a kid in a candy shop, and at that moment, I felt truly blessed to watch them come back and win in extra innings during Memorial Day weekend.
In July of 2019, I created my first baseball website called Dugout Dish. I had no clue what I would write about until my parents, and I went to Christian Day at Busch Stadium. I will never forget hearing Paul Goldschmidt say that Jesus loves baseball. That will stick with me for the rest of my life. So naturally, my first post on my website was about that day.
Dugout Dish led me to many opportunities. I began writing for my local newspaper’s sports department and even had the incredible opportunity to meet my softball idol, Jennie Finch. I was featured in the St. Louis news about my website and its creation. That winter, I was offered to help with a local radio sports show that focused on high school sports, and I loved recognizing young athletes for their accomplishments.
In January of 2020, before the world fell apart, I earned credentials with the St. Louis Cardinals and was a part of the media for their Winter Warm-Ups. I met Ozzie Smith, Paul DeJong, Lane Thomas, Harrison Bader, Dylan Carlson, and John Brebbia. That weekend was one of the best weekends in my entire 30 years on this Earth. Before COVID-19, I was ready to take on the baseball world.
Then things changed. Baseball shut down, but I did not. I continued interviewing independent baseball players, staffers, and anyone who would let me talk to them about baseball. I kept my podcast up to date, and my work landed me spots at Prospects Live and Pitcher List.
While still working for the radio and online newspaper, I had an opportunity to cover live baseball in the middle of 2020. A group of college baseball players returned home and wanted to play. So, they made two teams and decided to play from June until August, when it was time to go back to school. With this being the only form of baseball played in my hometown, I jumped on it. I took a camera, phone, and GameChanger app and went to work. I covered every game, and baseball gave me something special once again.
I tweeted a photo from a game and this local guy that followed me replied to the tweet about one of his former players getting on base. Except for casual tweets on the app, I did not know this guy, but I went ahead and asked why he was not there since he lived in the same town that the games were played. He said he would come to a game, but he was not there at the next one. Eventually, I asked him again, and he replied on Twitter that he wanted to see Max Scherzer pitch. I understood that and asked him to come to the next one.
When he finally came to a game, he told me that he was there and was looking for me. A month later, we started dating. We grew up eight minutes from each other and played at the same ballpark growing up. With me being four years older, we always just missed each other. He went off and played college baseball before coming back to teach and coach high school baseball. A year later, we’re engaged, bought a home and have a cat named Slugger.
Once sports returned, I had the opportunity to cover the baseball team that he coaches. The team made it to the Kentucky State HS Championship game, and although they lost in the final game of the season, those moments – the little things throughout the season continued to prove that baseball is magical.
As I said at the beginning of this, what baseball means to me is not a simple answer or a cliche response. I owe everything to baseball, from being a little kid to now as an actual baseball writer and sports journalist. Baseball has given me love, happiness, sadness, kindness, lifelong friends, and opportunities I only dreamed about as a child.
Last season, I witnessed my dad seeing the Braves win the World Series. Last summer, I watched my future husband coaching in a state championship game as I reported on it for the newspaper. There are so many memories that baseball has given me, and I cannot wait for the next memory that it hands me.