For a period in my life I was a nearly obsessive fan of the band the Grateful Dead. This had at least partly to do with the fact that I was in love with a woman who was an obsessive fan of the Grateful Dead. Our relationship was quite turbulent, with one of us usually packing our bags. I suppose wondering when the next Dead “set” or concert series would be announced, strategizing about getting tickets, getting the tickets (which was an ordeal equivalent to the most impressive feats of engineering), waiting not altogether patiently for the shows to arrive, traveling to the shows if they were out of town, preparing for the concert in the hours before, driving, parking, the concert itself, and the post-show debriefing and meal (which almost always consisted of a very late night breakfast), supplied a no-conflict zone that we both appreciated. It was something that made us both happy, and that we shared.

But the truth is, mostly it wasn’t the girl. Mostly it was the Dead.

The interesting thing is that I could write a whole book about what the music and the shows meant to me, and no matter how convincing a case I made for Jerry and the boys, anyone who was never a big Dead fan wouldn’t buy it. They would be dismissive, probably chuckle, maybe even sneer. What, they would ask, is a semi-intelligent person doing spending thousands of dollars and hours traveling all over creation to see a bunch of drug-addled (well, Jerry, anyway) ex-flower children play electrified bluegrass? I could answer, I might even answer intelligently, but it wouldn’t matter. As they say, either you’re on the bus or your not.

The other interesting thing is that for anyone (and there were so, so many) who was, even for a short time, really committed to seeing the Dead, no argument is necessary. When I find former Deadheads at parties or elsewhere, and I bring up my experience, their eyes widen, their lips separate, and they shake their head just a little, ruefully, and say, “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.” In other words: (a) there was nothing like and will never be anything like the Dead, (b) if only Jerry hadn’t cut short the ride by drugging himself to death, and (c) well, actually, this one is a little harder to explain. It’s like this, I think: the rueful head-shake is meant not only to convey sadness and longing – for the good old days, for the shows, for Jerry, about the experience we all shared. It’s meant to express a connectedness, a shared reality. In other words, I get what you are feeling and you get what I am feeling; we both know that we understand what the other has experienced and, significantly, we know that relatively (i.e., to the population of the earth) few people have experienced or get it (this small group really does not include people who went to a few shows over the years; if you didn’t know the hotline number by heart, you were never one of us); that some people chuckle and sneer at us for our experience and love of the band; and, most significantly, we actually like it that way.

So what does this have to do with baseball? Relax. I’m getting there.

Here’s yet another interesting thing: for anyone who thinks a Grateful Dead show was a rock concert, think again. A Dead show was a mass; the attendees were acolytes, not fans. The shows, particularly in later years, followed a predictable and uniform format. Except on special occasions, there was no opening act. The band would walk on stage. They would rarely even acknowledge the audience. Indeed, if Garcia ever spoke (as opposed to sand) into his mike, it was cause for minutes of raucous celebration. The boys were there to work. And work they did, for about an hour. Then they would take a break, of about half an hour. Then they would return, play a few songs, and again leave the stage.

Well, all would leave other than Mickey Hart, the drummer, who would then drum for a while. This would begin a period of the show called, unsurprisingly, “drums.” The other drummer, Bill Kreutzman, would then join him and the two would drum together for a while. Then other members of the band would wander on stage and go into a new portion of the show, called, “space.” Space was precisely what it sounds like – a time of musical experimentation that rarely sounded like a song. After a while the band would come out of space into a song. Then they would play several more songs. Then they would leave. Then they would play one (or on rare occasions two encores) and that was it. From right to left, if you were facing the stage, stood Jerry, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh. Indeed, the stage set up was so reliable that those who were most fond of Phil sat in the section closest to him, often with signs that read “Let Phil sing,” which he rarely did.

The sort of things one commonly sees on stage at rock concerts--manic banter among band members, running, jumping, hip-thrusting, diving, smashing of instruments, electrified hair, metallic outfits, outstretched tongues, dancing girls/boys, headsets that permit the band members to travel around the stage, band members who travel around the stage, rockers who play to the female (or male, I suppose) groupies in the first row, hoping to get lucky post-show, rockers who throw things into the audience, musicians who voice political viewpoints, &tc. – were almost never a part of a Grateful Dead show.

The shows were rather staid affairs, really. The band, dressed demurely, came on stage, played, left, returned, played, left, returned, played, left. They spoke rarely, even among themselves. There was very little hoopla: no dancing, no light show, no dry ice smoke, no fancy sets. The Dead came to play music and that is what they did, often to a point of collective (the crowd’s at least) ecstasy I’ve never experienced elsewhere. The following reference will not make any sense to non-Deadheads, but I can’t help myself: when Jerry hit the high, emphatic notes in Stella Blue, it was enough to suggest that life was and is truly a beautiful thing.

Which brings us to the following question: Could it be that many people love baseball, and going to baseball games in particular, for some of the same reasons I and so many other reasonably intelligent people spent years going to hundreds of Grateful Dead shows?

What got me thinking about this question was this: I finally convinced my wife, who has no interest in baseball, and claims never even to have glanced at my writings on the subject, to go to a game with me. The Dodgers were in town for some inter-league play. It was unusually warm at the park. I’d been on the road so I hadn’t been to a game in a while. The A’s were on a roll, having won something like the last eight straight, including a three game sweep (a three game sweep, for God’s sake!) of the Yankees in New York. So I was in a very fine mood. We sat in section 124, row 39, which put us up the third base line.

During the game, a guy to my left, who could not realistically have believed he could be heard on the field, but who did not appear to be drunk or demented, repeatedly yelled things like, “Go get em Swish” and “beat LA” and so forth.

I thought, “Why is that guy making himself hoarse yelling stuff, which, while perfectly nice, has no chance of actually having the apparently intended effect, i.e., to encourage the players in the performance of their baseball duties.

Then, I thought, why did the people who sat in Phil’s section at Grateful Dead shows yell, “Let Phil sing” when (a) they, too, couldn’t be heard and (b) they were well aware that the Dead did what the Dead wanted to do, and that their request could have no effect.

Then, I thought, wait, like a Dead show, a baseball game has a totally set and predictable structure. The music (the action on the field) changes, but the process (visitors up first, three outs per inning, &tc) never changes. People like the comfort of sameness. So much in life is unpredictable. It’s nice to know that depending on when you arrive at the game, it’s either before or after the Star Spangled Banner, before or after dot-racing on the big screen, before or after the guy with the blue cotton candy comes by, before or after the sports highlights vote, before or after Take Me Out to the Ball Game during seventh inning stretch. It not only makes you feel like there is some order in life; also there’s a comfort in knowing that whatever it is you’re there for, it’s almost certainly very much like the something the other 25,000 people are there for.

Maybe people yell at baseball games (just as Deadheads vocally support their favorite band members) because it gives voice to the existence of community. We are in this together. Compassion, attachment, maybe even love?

Anyway, my wife ate a bag of Starbursts, I tried the barbecued pork ribs (I’m sticking with the chicken from now on), there were a couple of homers, a few incredible plays in the field, and the A’s won. Life, at least for the moment, is truly a beautiful thing.