I don’t use the app formerly known as Twitter much these days. My X feed is littered with bots and AI-generated tweets from blue-checkmark dweebs. When breaking news is unfolding, it’s nearly impossible to get verified, real-time updates, with the platform prioritizing alarmist posts that drive engagement over factual information. But when I do log onto X, it’s in pursuit of one thing, and one thing only: updates on Philadelphia sports teams. If I don’t have access to the Sixers or Phillies at a given time, I can gather the state of a game based on a flurry of tweets from official Philly sports accounts and fan pages (oftentimes, these are negative reactions).
Before Opening Day last week, my feed was filled with anticipatory posts about the start of the new MLB season: The excitement for baseball to finally be back. The new food and drink offerings each ballpark would be offering. The soul-crushing losses our teams would inevitably inflict upon us. However, I also began noticing an influx of a slightly different type of post on my X For You page. These posts were really more calls to action, reminders that this season you should take a pretty girl to a baseball game.
Although my Philadelphia Phillies are already 1-3, as I watched them lose in embarrassing fashion to the Nationals on Monday night, I still found myself asking my boyfriend if we could go to a game at Citizens Bank Park next week. Between these posts and my own sentiments, it seems women want one thing this spring: for you to take them out to the ballgame.
The ballpark is an underrated but pretty ideal date spot, regardless of whether it’s your first date or your hundredth. That’s because an outing to a baseball game is relatively easy. Unlike going to the movies, where you are forbidden from speaking for two to three hours, or an intimate dinner where you’re forced to stare at each other and converse, a baseball game is the perfect middle ground to get to know someone without it being too awkward or stressful.
“[A baseball game] keeps the mood easy and low-pressure. You are sharing the experience side by side, and the game itself gives you natural conversation starters without feeling like an interview,” says Sandra Myers, president and co-founder of Select Date Society and a New York Mets fan. “The built-in breaks make it easy to talk, laugh and check in, while still giving each person something to focus on if either gets nervous.”
“Baseball has a natural pace,” adds Lisa Materna, a publicist and Los Angeles Dodgers fan married to a Milwaukee Brewers fan. “There are enough lulls built into the game that actually force you to talk to your date. Whether it’s about stats, the history of the game or just getting to know them, there’s little-to-no pressure to fill the silence because the game does it for you. Plus, you get to share a hot dog.”
Worried she doesn’t know anything about baseball? Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t really matter. (Unless she’s explicitly stated she hates baseball. But then why are you dating her in the first place?)
Nancy B. Irwin, a clinical psychologist and Dodgers fan, tells me that one of the first dates she went on with her now-husband was to a Dodgers game, even though, at the time, she didn’t know much about the sport.
“He is a lifelong baseball fan, and I frankly did not know the difference between a baseball and a football. But when we entered Dodger Stadium, it was like stepping into Oz. All of my senses immediately said: ‘Ahhhh.’ The place is pure joy; everyone there is bonded by the beauty of this timeless, classic American pastime. No one is a stranger at a ballpark,” she says, adding that, thanks to her husband, she has now become a “baseball freak.”
“That was 16 years ago, and we’ve been married for almost 12 years now,” she says. “The Dodgers are an important part of our relationship, and I never imagined I’d become a sports nut late in life, but I did.”
It might not be evident at first, but the ballpark is a setting conducive to getting to know — or weeding out — potential partners.
“You learn more about someone in a ballpark than you do across a dinner table,” says Anneliese Place, longtime Boston Red Sox fan and founder of Rock n Roll Highway. “You see how they handle a crowd, how they treat people, how they react to excitement. It gives you a real sense of their personality in a natural way.”
And if the date goes poorly and doesn’t end in a Lady and the Tramp-style hot dog kiss, well, there is an upside, Mae, a Chicago Cubs fan and Twitch streamer, tells me: “I get to enjoy a sport I love, even if the date sucks.”
How can you not be romantic about baseball?
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