Keep Your Eye on the Ball

April 12, 2025.

I sat in the stands with my dad for a game against the Milwaukee Brewers. I was a day away from flying to Spain with my wife and children to show them a whole other half of my family for the first time. A Diamondbacks game with the man that practically raised me in this stadium felt like the perfect send off, if only for a little while.

We grew up on this team. In the early 2000s, I was at the BOB listening to the organist more than the organist at church. We sat in the left field bleachers every time; I became so used to the view that I ended up playing left field myself. Whatever the name of the stadium, the colors of the team, or the players on the field, this place was home.

The D-Backs are struggling to get anything going and it’s all thanks to some rookie we drafted named Chad Patrick. He ended up pulling a reverse snow bird by ending up in Milwaukee. My dad and I had a fairly decent amount to catch up on, but we live only a few minutes away from each other, so we talked mostly about the team.

By the 4th inning of that game, something shifted. My dad pulled out his phone and opened Facebook. For the rest of the night, the game in front of us became background noise. Every couple of minutes or so, he would show me photos of people I’d never met or some silly meme that made him chuckle. Mentally, he was somewhere else.

Physically, we were sitting in the left field bleachers.

Years of high fives after home runs, singing “Louie Louie” when Gonzo came up to bat, doing that silly little arm pump dance when the organ plays that one song (you know the one). Years of getting in line to get Baxter’s autograph in his clubhouse, eating McFlurries during the 7th inning stretch, and taking me out of class early sometimes to go to an afternoon game. Years of coaching me in Little League all the way to watching me play in high school. The strength of a bond like that was still no match to escape the gravitational pull of a 6 inch screen.

“Look, the D-Backs have an 11.8% chance of winning it says. You wanna just get out of here to beat traffic?”

These are the AnswerBacks – I’m not going anywhere till the Brewers can get three outs.

Geno grounds out, but I’m not phased. Let’s see what we got.

Gabi walks. Alek rides one to center. Garrett Hampson walks. Corbin barrels one right off the 413 sign in right center.

“That was perfect! Corbin just won me some money on a bet I made!”

Perdomo hops to first. Jake lines one right over the second baseman. Naylor doesn’t even get a chance to be the hero as he gets sent to first. Lourdes summons enough piña power to send Perdomo into home.

Ball game.

9th inning rallies like that are some of the most special memories you can have, especially if you shared it with someone. Baseball is a magical sport and it’s hard to replicate that intensity anywhere else. You’d assume I’d think back fondly on that game.

All I can think about was that damn phone.

The disconnect usually starts as a subconscious twitch. The pitcher steps off the rubber to fix his PitchCom and your hand is already in your pocket. You start hearing the Rafi Rafi jingle and you’re already three comments deep into a thread about ridiculous trade rumors. We’ve developed a compulsion to fill every silent moment with a screen.

It happens between innings. It happens between plays. I bet it even happens between pitches for some of us. Whether you’re at the stadium or at home, the phone has become the primary experience. The game is relegated as the second screen. We’ve lost the ability to just sit with the game and let the tension build naturally. Instead of soaking in the relaxed yet intense beauty that is baseball, we’re trying to figure out why some user named dodger4life could be such a boneheaded idiot.

When we do look down, we rarely find anything that makes the game better. Social media has turned fandom into a constant state of combat and a flood of insubstantial content. Instead of enjoying the glory that is Ketel Marte, we’re scrolling through the Diamondbacks subreddit, and maybe even-

shudders

Facebook Diamondbacks fan pages.

This constant stream of negativity poisons the way we see the team. It turns a hobby into another source of stress and anger. You stop seeing the Diamondbacks as a team and start seeing them as a collection of stats to argue about. You lose the ability to appreciate the season because the internet demands an immediate reaction to everything.

As our new season starts today, I challenge you, and myself, to do one thing.

Keep your eye on the ball.

Put the phone away. No one is saying anything you couldn’t enjoy after the game anyway. Yeah, it might seem a little ironic since I did create a podcast with my friends that has social media accounts all about the D-Backs with the intention that people see it. But that’s fine though. It’ll all be there waiting for you later if you really want to see. Our intention is about building a community, not creating content just to try and get paid.

Abstaining from social media during the season is a way to reclaim your own perspective, your own love of the team, and your own love of baseball. By putting the phone away, you’re giving yourself freedom to enjoy baseball the way we did back in the good ol’ days. You’re choosing to have your own thoughts about a player instead of adopting a narrative from a clip. You’re deciding that being present for the game, and the people you watch it with, is more important than the digital noise. I want to get back to the version of fandom my dad taught me before he got sucked in by all the distractions.

What’s rule number one in baseball? What did my dad teach me all those years ago?

Keep your eye on the ball.