Written by I am obsessed with baseball, and this is my favorite time of the year. In the middle of the MLB postseason, my favorite team is in the thick of things. All of the series have been exciting, with several stars taking center stage. One of those stars has taken the internet by storm to become a cult hero beloved by his hometown fans.
This hero, Boston Red Sox first baseman Kyle Schwarber, is known affectionately as “KYLE FROM WALTHAM.” All caps are required. Schwarber joined the Red Sox in August and has been on a tear, reaching a crescendo last Monday when Schwarber hit a moon-shot grand slam in game three of the American League Championship Series. It was the third grand slam for the Red Sox in two games and appeared to launch Boston on a clear path to the World Series.
The City of Waltham is “SO proud” of Schwarber, and the Waltham Boys & Girls Club is rooting for him. A local ice cream shop named a flavor for its new favorite son. Everyone from everywhere seemed to be asking the question, who is KYLE FROM WALTHAM? Schwarber took the podium at a press conference wearing a Waltham Hawks t-shirt, proclaiming “Go Hawks!”
The only problem is that Schwarber is from Middletown, Ohio, and his midwestern accent doesn’t allow him to pronounce Waltham as the locals do, saying “walt-HAM” rather than “WALT-hum”.
Regardless, KYLE FROM WALTHAM is the future of baseball because it’s fun. We sometimes forget to have fun in a sport overrun by statistics and continuous pressure to perform and win.
KYLE FROM WALTHAM was the creation of blogger and baseball Twitter celebrity Jared Carrabis. Carrabis has nearly 400k followers and claims to be an “Unbiased National Baseball Journalist” and “Baseball Twitter’s Tribal Chief.” He is far from unbiased, and if you look at his feed, you will see his undying affection for the Red Sox.
Carrabis has nicknames for most of the Red Sox players. Needing one for Schwarber, he observed that he looked like a hometown guy. Carrabis does have a national following, mostly nerds like me who follow the sport religiously all summer and into the fall. We put up with his Red Sox propaganda because he does cover the entire sport and engages everyone with his brand of entertaining content.
So, maybe Carrabis is the chief of the Baseball Twitter tribe. There are other Baseball Twitter stars, like the Baseball Brit, Rob Friedman a.k.a. “The Pitching Ninja” and “The Batting Stance Guy.” They all aim to grow the game. Not by overwhelming us with information, but by making the game more fun.
Being a baseball fan is a grind. There are 162 games, many of them not very exciting. You have to deal with injuries, bad calls, and slumps. Some seasons, your team is no good. Though only a few months, the off-season seems to last forever.
But right now, my beloved Houston Astros are playing the Red Sox, and the series is fun. There have been two significant changes in momentum already, with two games remaining this weekend.
The fans are intense, but the players appear to be having fun. The Red Sox celebrate home runs by giving the batter a ride across the dugout in a laundry cart. After hitting a go-ahead home run in the first game of the series, Carlos Correa pointed to his wrist, telling the players in the Astros dugout that “it’s time!”
When Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez forced Correa to ground out to end the sixth inning of game three to end his spectacular outing, he returned the favor and tapped on his wrist as he returned to the dugout. Red Sox manager Alex Cora wasn’t happy, worried that the gesture would poke the bear.
Correa thought it was fun. “He did my celebration. I thought it was kind of cool,” Correa said. “It’s just the way baseball is trending moving forward. We talk about making baseball fun. We talk about baseball growing and more people coming to watch the sport. You need things like that. You need to let the players have fun. I love it, personally.”
Hopefully, people will listen. Our society provides hatred, division, and pressure to perform everywhere in our day-to-day lives. The rest of my Twitter feed gives me all I need of that. Baseball Twitter should be a diversion.
The people who run baseball should take a cue from its players like Correa and KYLE FROM WALTHAM. They should take themselves just a bit less seriously and engage with the fans of their sport, their tribe. We all could use more fun.
It’s time.