Baseball is slow and strange, with peculiar rules, and the people who play it all look suburban and as if they embody the word “laconic.” Their uniforms resemble pajamas. My hometown club keeps trading the players I like, and athletes who were marvelous a week ago are suddenly incapable of pitching, hitting, or catching. The fans complain about them bitterly. We have brilliant spurts and then squander all the goodwill by falling apart. I don’t gamble on sports, nor do I drink.

Nonetheless (therefore?), I am a baseball fan.

I go to at least one in-person game a year, and this year I am even more into it than usual because I blew some money on a television package, so I’ve been watching all the games. The Phillies were terrible last month, and then suddenly went on a winning streak after firing their perfectly wonderful manager.

It was blazing hot (95°F, 35°C), sunny, and humid. Vendors were selling cheap bottles of water outside, and I bought three; I was equipped with sunscreen, ball cap, and UV-resistant coverup, and I promised both my best friend and my adult kid that I would be careful.

The seat was unusually good, behind home plate one section back, because I bought it on sale early in the season. I had to get there via a special entrance and get a wrist band, that’s how good the seats were. I could actually see the players’ faces when I emerged from the restaurant area into the fantasy world of a summer day game.

The field was an almost offensive bright green, and there was a lot of green, right there in front of me. The Jumbotron was flashing and glaring, and the lights that line the stadiums were dancing in unison. The mascot was driving his quad around the field. The announcer’s mellifluous voice harked back to the old days of broadcast when everything was said in the deepest tones, and with the maximum inflection, and when he announced that a kindergarten class was going to be singing the national anthem, I could see the kids on the screen but also see them down on the field with the camera operator.

A computer teacher (from a school where I used to supervise future teachers) came out and threw the first pitch to our remarkable mascot, the Phanatic. The woman in the seat next to me informed me it wasn’t the usual guy in the Phanatic suit; she and her husband have season tickets in a different and the regular Phanatic actually waves at her when he sees her. I knew it was a different guy without her telling me, because the exuberance and borderline crudity of the regular performer is a wonderful thing, but the costume makes up for a lot.

The woman next to me was pleasant, and it turned out the woman was a teacher, and we had a few acquaintances in common. Her husband caught a foul ball during the game; she told me he had caught hundreds. He gave it away to a child after he took its photo. The rest of the game he complained nonstop about our pitcher, so I was glad he was sitting on the other side of his wife from me.

I settled in, covered in sun block, swathed in my cover up, wearing my sunglasses, and enjoyed a fairly terrible game. The hot, still air was dead and balls didn’t go very far; the Reds were hitting and the Phillies weren’t, and our best slugge was out sick. But I had wonderful seats, and could see when a pitch was a strike, could hear the sound of the bat, could mutter imprecations to the players. In between batters I could watch children, caught on camera, waving their arms excitedly. I was getting exactly what I wanted, which was to be alive. It’s nice being alive.

When I got too hot, and after I was unable to eat a fairly awful chicken cheesesteak, I gathered up my things and went home on the subway, because I don’t own a car, and that was nice too.

The Phillies lost 9-4, in case anyone cares.