By: Erin Nash Follow me on my Twitter and Instagram account. Also, check out my website, The 6-4-3 Media.
When I sit down to think about what baseball means to me, I have a hard time even figuring out how to put it into words. Baseball, for all intents and purposes, has been a lifeline to me for a majority of my life, a safe space. It’s all the exclamation marks. Love! Stress! Anxiety! Winning! Losing! Happiness! Adrenaline! I am the happiest, most full version of myself when I’m at the ballpark. College, minor league, major league, doesn’t matter… put me at the ballpark and I come alive.
To really understand my “why” we first need to get into the icky stuff for a minute. Abuse as a child, at the hands of someone I thought I could trust and needing a way to escape is where my love of baseball stems from. While that might sound tragic to some, it’s really the beginning of a beautiful story for me.
I had a happy childhood growing up, with a few really traumatic moments. My Mawmaw is the one who is responsible for introducing me to the game. While trying to navigate trauma and healing as a child, baseball was always background noise, and somewhere within all of that, baseball became my coping mechanism. It became the one thing I found true, genuine happiness in. At first that love was just surrounding the Atlanta Braves, then gradually, over time it became an all-encompassing love for all of baseball.
August 10, 2003, the Braves are playing the Cardinals in St. Louis. It’s the bottom of the 5th inning, runners on first (Orlando Palmeiro) and second (Mike Matheny) with the pitcher, Woody Williams, at the plate. He lines one straight to the Braves shortstop, Rafael Furcal, who in a leaping catch continues to turn only the 12th unassisted triple play ever in MLB history.
And with that, comes the Braves getting knocked out in the NLDS against the Chicago Cubs that year. To say I burst into tears would be a slight understatement. I clearly remember my mom asking me if I was okay. She thought someone was dying. No mom, the Braves just lost. What made it even worse was that the man she was with at the time, Tom, was a huge Cubs fan. He was a good man though, he understood me, my trauma, and really made an effort to support me where my love for baseball was concerned. To this day, I still have the first bat he ever bought me with a note on it that says, “Erin: keep your shoulder down & swing away!”
That was a defining season for me. I can say I loved baseball before, but the way that spurred me to dig deep, and learn everything I could… it was huge. I collected baseball cards, bobble heads, and whatever else I could get my hands on. There was a store in the Greenville Mall in Greenville, South Carolina where I’d go every Thursday night with my dad for Father/Daughter date night, and every single time we’d walk out with one thing or another.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience so many incredible, memorable moments in my lifetime so far where baseball is concerned. However, getting to watch my Braves become World Series Champions this past season was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever experienced. The highs and lows of the season and years past, the tears shed, and laughs had – it was all worth it. Your Atlanta Braves are the 2021 World Series Champions. Even saying it still makes me want to cry. Kid me would be absolutely geeked out knowing what was to come, that through all the mountains and valleys, eventually there would be light – and the feeling of it all, it can’t be accurately put into words.
As they do, over the years things have changed and shifted, for both good and bad. The one constant? Baseball. I have met some of the most incredible people through the game, and those people have helped me heal in ways I never thought possible. With growing, learning, and healing has come this absolute need to bring light and awareness to mental illness within sports. I feel like part of my purpose in life is to give voice to those who are too scared to use their own. Mental health is important, and with how much baseball has helped me recover and heal, my hope is that it can do the same for others who are struggling.
It really is more than just a game. It’s more than nine players on the field. It’s more than homeruns, and strikeouts. It is the life-source of sports for this country. Baseball is America’s favorite pastime, and the best way I’ve ever heard it described comes from the movie ‘Field of Dreams,’ Terence Mann, famously played by the iconic James Earl Jones said,
“The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.” That last line is what really gets me. “It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.”
And that’s just it, isn’t it? Baseball brings people together. It forges bonds that are not easily broken. When something tragic happens within the sports, every fan, from every fanbase comes together. Divisions don’t matter, only baseball.
Baseball is everything… means everything to me. It’s inspiration. It’s heartache. It’s happiness. It’s the longest, most sincere relationship with anything I’ve had in my life, and without I don’t know who or where I’d be.
I have been given some of the best moments of my life through this game, and I truly can’t wait to see what the future holds where baseball is concerned.
Go Braves!