By Jennifer Eisenbart
Sports Editor
Summer is in full swing, we’ve had our first significant summer storm day – if Sunday didn’t fit the bill for you, I don’t know what would – and we’re almost at the end of July.
You know what that means? Baseball playoffs. Again.
What’s nice about the summer is how many different levels of baseball playoffs we get. It’s not just the high school kids, it’s the kids in grade school and it’s the kids who have graduated from college.
Fact many people don’t know: I used to hate baseball. Call it the inevitable result of having too many television shows I enjoyed – including more science fiction than I can count and then gymnastics pre-empted for the Boston Red Sox in 1986.
I also didn’t like volleyball or basketball when I was growing up, but that was because I was tall and everyone assumed I played one or both. No one ever pegged me for the swimmer I was, I might add, but I digress.
I held a special hatred for baseball until the first time I covered a game in Marshfield in 1999. There was a press box, and a place to sit, and I found myself sitting next to a radio duo that knew what the heck they were talking about. Having never had the joy of listening to Bob Uecker – and trust me, I have since fixed that – it stunned me to realize that radio announcing of a game could actually be educational.
I also learned how to keep a baseball book, and by the next year, I saw the Marshfield baseball team make it to the WIAA state tournament. By then, I had also covered one game in rain and sleet in 40-degree weather one day and another in 75-degree sunshine the next day.
Funny side note to that season: one of the standouts on that team, Ben King, was also a great football player. He signed a football scholarship to a school in Illinois, but got tired of waiting for the standout quarterback there to graduate. Yes, he was the backup to Tony Romo.
But that group taught me to love baseball. Everything I’ve seen since has just fueled that love. I can’t say I love rainy springs, sweltering summers and covering games in 40-degree weather (because no matter where you are in Wisconsin, that’s a certainty at least once each spring), but I love the game.
And I love watching youngsters playing the game. Since arriving in Burlington in 2005, I’ve had a number of thrills.
My first spring here, both Burlington High School and Catholic Central High School made it to the WIAA state tournament. Since then, both teams have had success, including four state titles for the Hilltoppers. Now if we could just get the two schools to work out a non-conference game between the two teams. The kids play together during the summer for legion ball, so clearly, they can make things work out.
There have also been a pair of Little League state champions at the 11-12-year-old level, the first of which made the national broadcast on ESPN. A third team is in Waupun this week for the state championship tournament, and could make it the third state title in four years for the Burlington program. Stay tuned – like most everything Sunday, they got rained out.
Meanwhile, Burlington is playing host to the U-16 American Legion tournament. The winner of the subregional here will play the winner of the Janesville subregional Tuesday.
Add in the Burlington Rotary Barons and the Waterford Rivermen, and it’s baseball all over the place right now.
Somehow, it seems no one would have it any other way – including me.
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