When I was a kid, we always had Drumsticks in the freezer in the summer. Unless we had ice cream sandwiches. Then, maybe we had Drumsticks. There was always one of the two, though. Or so I remember.
I’ve always loved the feeling of sitting at the end of the night in the living room, hair wet from the shower, pajamas or their equivalent on, preferably eating ice cream. I think this started in those summers growing up. We’d watch TV together as a family—Cheers one summer, Different Strokes one summer, Whose Line Is It Anyway? one summer. And when they came, we tended to watch the Home Run Derby, followed by the All-Star Game.
The Home Run Derby is just so fun. The players’ kids there in foul territory. The just-competitive-enough aspect of the thing. The spectacle of it all. It’s great at creating moments, too, from Josh Hamilton’s smashes in Yankee Stadium to Trey Mancini’s feel-good run last night. It often comes at a time when there are few other sports on TV, and when summer’s settled in enough that the franticness has left, but school’s far enough away that the sense of waning hasn’t begun. It’s a happy time. It’s an easy time. It’s a good time to eat a Drumstick, or to eat an ice cream sandwich, and to sit back and watch the show. The next night, if you’re a kid, you can talk about it at your Little League practice, which will of course be a short one because the All-Star Game’s on.
Our world isn’t exactly carefree. I don’t know how much of this is the time in history and how much is just my time in life, but regardless of cause, it’s nice to enjoy something that is carefree. Something like the Home Run Derby. It was good, last night, to have it back.
🙂