Creating drama with my high school best friend was one of my favorite hobbies, and in 1991 and 1992, it reached a crescendo. More often than not,  my uber-dramatic tendencies, paired with her apathy, mixed with teenage hormones, life transitions, and a group of none-too-vindictive periphery friends, made for a sort of perfect storm. Tara and I really weren't ever bigger than baseball, a concept I spent at least half of my adolescence trying to convince myself of, in an attempt to make our friendship work.  We spent the better portion of five years exchanging letters concerning my perceived neglect, our supposed equal affection for the game, and my discontent with the status quo.

                                                                                                                                                               This, and other devastating changes!

It wasn't until years later, dealing with issues of the more grown-up variety, that I realized the drama wasn't ever entirely all my fault. The two year span, my third and fourth year as a baseball fan, were riddled with transition. My dad stopped working at the only place I'd ever known him to work, launching my mom into a morose fit of doom. I graduated from middle school, embarking on my tumultuous (and fairly boring) high school career. More importantly, the Orioles relocated from Memorial Stadium, and settled into their new home, north of the harbor. This was a relocation I struggled with nearly as long as all of my other relocations, which seems odd now that there are few images that strike me more as home than the B&O warehouse building.  I also decided, after a Friday night watching fireworks on 33rd Street, listening to Jesus Jones, and sucking back colossal sobs, that I would never speak to Tara ever again. Neither the fact that I'd made this decision before, or that I would make it at least several times again, negated the impact of the declaration, perhaps due in part to the fact that it was so wrapped up in Baltimore sports lore.

It's funny now, smashing these two years down into a few paragraphs. I remember the days passing, at the time, mostly the winter ones, dragging by like a slow moving traffic jam up I-95 toward Cooperstown.  Camden Yards was the place I became a veteran, and experienced baseball rites of passage and history. In 1992, it seemed like I'd never get used to it. So much went on, and now it seems like such a small portion of my entire life.The thing about these two years - the beginning of high school, the attempts at socializing and dating, and the realization for the first time, that the things going on around me weren't necessarily things I wanted to fit in with - I sort of still got caught up in my surroundings at the time, ultimately screwing things up because they always felt so weird.  I guess I never really was a pep rally sort of person, but not in the the sort of way that Mike Mussina isn't a pep rally person. I had a hard time connecting, and at the time, that seemed like a problem. It wasn't until adulthood that I realized how normal I really was.

The thing is, I was always trying to force myself into molds that I never fit in, while still consciously trying to retain my passion for baseball, because even then, I knew I'd found something that was part of the core of who I was. Even my first post-fanship, non-baseball related crush, sparked and/or suffered at the hands of this fate. He sauntered past me on a Friday morning, during our pre-homeroom tradition of circling the halls of the school like a parade of cattle. It as an act less for early morning calesthenics, than it was a chance to create a pubescent meat-market. The act enabled Tara and I to follow at a comfortable pace behind him, admiring his admittedly admirable ass, clad in jeans far too tight for the 1990's. After a weekend of Tara referring to this brooding guy as "the Bill guy" she talked me into having a crush on him. I have abstract memories of eating at the Bob's Big Boy in Gettysburg with him, and driving him home late one night in my mom's Italian sports car. Much like that last sentence, his presence in my life now seems such a bizarre part of my personal history. (Gnocchi is about as sporty and Italian as I get these days. Well, and Dolce and Gabanna.) 

Now, seventeen years later, it's hard to imagine there was ever a time that I was not attached to Camden Yards. As each intentionally orchestrated circumstance,launched by my continuous mistep of rushing headlong into perceived normalcy, would crash down around me, I'd lament over the ease with which my life ran, back before Memorial Stadium closed. I, undeservedly, hung a good deal of my angst on what was, and still is, the gem of baseball architecture. Mets fans should probably know that it's worth the upgrade, even though it takes awhile to settle in. Yankees fan will experience a more difficult transition, but really, I'm not one to wish anything besides difficulty on the Yankees. Like any great pair of shoes, it might take a little while to wear them in, and get them to the point where they feel as comfortable as they look. But if there's anything I'm a pro at, it's great shoes. And having more than one location that I consider home.
Sometimes I just want to go back.