COLUMN: A place for studying, sleeping and baseball

From Siona Listokin's, "Think Different," Fall '00 From Siona Listokin's, "Think Different," Fall '00Baseball attracts a strange crowd to its stadiums in April. Fans arrive to watch rusty teams play what amounts to little more than exhibition games. They sit in isolated groups on days that are a bit too cold and stare in wonder at the empty seats around them. We are a group made up of mostly Yankees and Red Sox fans, but we cheer unabashedly for the home team -- a mediocre National League club whose play in April means very little. Our enthusiasm for the Phillies grew slowly, though. Like many Penn students' first reactions to anything in Philadelphia, we engaged in the critical business of comparison. The stadium is so ugly. The team is so bland. The fans are so ugly and bland. And the mascot! Why, in New York? But gradually our jeers of derision became cheers of happy conviction. The proximity of the stadium, the ease and low price of buying a ticket and lots of good old college free time resulted in many afternoons and evenings watching the Phillies fight for a .500 season. Nothing exciting ever happened to me at the Vet. I once got free seats on the third-base line from a group of lawyers expensing their firm. In the midst of a bout with insomnia, I had a delicious nap during a 12-2 rout by Houston. During finals -- and here I abdicate all claims to slackerhood -- I studied for a macroeconomics test from the stands. I have visited the Vet with good friends and with random acquaintances. I went with my freshman hall the second day of school. I have gone with boys I liked and boys I didn't. The month before my brother's wedding, the two of us spent many April afternoons there trying to avoid any sort of serious conversation. It is strange that I now associate opening day with the Phillies. But I am getting ready to leave this city, and though I have internalized little else of Philadelphia, I have adopted a bit of its baseball as my own. My hours at the Vet were among the most unimportant of my life. I suspect they will be a large part of my memory of these four years in Philly. Everybody has their own version of Veterans Stadium. College life has large blocks of empty time, and you must spend it somewhere. A living room, perhaps, or a study lounge or the Bookstore. It is the place where you have spent multiple meaningless hours with the same people over and over again. Where you discussed life goals and night plans and politics and hooking up and whatever else there is to talk about. And even if nothing exciting ever happened to you there, that place will be the backdrop of so many of your recollections of Penn. I think for me, however, baseball at the Vet is enjoyably insignificant compared to Octobers at Yankees Stadium, where the games have too much at stake to be truly relaxing. Like everything else for me in Philadelphia, Phillies games are but a shadow of the real thing played someplace else. The scary thing is realizing that college is not real life either, but a shadow of the real thing played someplace else. Penn is la-la land -- worrying about small tests and wasting loads of money and time is a poor parody of authentic adulthood. It is our own version of fluorescent green Astroturf. And so Aprils at the Vet are all the more dear. Those days are the epitome of unencumbered youth. I might find other teams more exciting, but I will never feel as carefree watching them as I did dancing with the Phanatic. I have got one more April at Veterans Stadium, and the Phillies are looking pretty good this year. The Phillies will be visiting Yankees Stadium for three games this summer, when I'll have left Penn and entered the workforce. In the real world, good seats to Yankees games are expensive, and it's a pain in the ass to get to the Bronx. And besides, who knows if I'll even be able to get out of work to see a game.