The first line of Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Can't Stop" gets me before the game has begun: "Can't stop, addicted to the shindig."
That is the ballpark experience in one diagnosis.
It is not just baseball. It is the walk toward the gates when the lights are visible above the buildings. It is music across the concourse, grill smoke nobody needs but everyone wants, kids carrying gloves too large for their arms, and the first sound of a crowd deciding the evening has started.
The song works because it does not pretend excitement is elegant. It is restless. It moves. It makes room for energy that arrives before there is anything sensible to celebrate. The game might be tied in the third inning. The weather might be weird. You might be holding a soda that costs more than it should. None of that changes the place becoming its own weather system.
A ballgame is a shindig with rules.
There are innings, scoreboards, walk-up songs, between-inning promotions, people making terrible predictions from five rows behind home plate, and one person in every section who reacts to a routine fly ball as though history has been asked to report immediately.
Maybe that is why I keep coming back. The ballpark does not ask whether the day was productive. It turns on the lights, starts the music, and gives everyone somewhere to look, which is enough on any given evening.
And for a few hours, I am happily addicted to the shindig.