It’s finally baseball season, and this makes me indescribably glad. When a final (or five) is looming, nothing is more comforting than the field of dreams. There is a reason that it is the national pastime — the stories and traditions of the game have carried over the decades. For many people, some of the fondest or most vivid memories in life are associated with baseball. Here are a few of mine, for example:

• On a weekend trip with my dad when I was nine years old, I entered Yankee Stadium for the first time. It’s a cliché, but as the sky grew darker, the energy of the crowd stayed high. We won, and as an added bonus both Paul O’Neill and Bernie Williams hit homers — earning them a special place in my heart forever after.

• The Indians beat the Yankees in the 1997 American League Division Series. This event was more scarring than happy for me — when the decisive Game 5 was done, my dad yelled “No!” so long and loud that it could be heard down the block.

• The Yankees came to D.C. to play my hometown Nationals in July of 2006, when I was graduating from high school. To celebrate, much of my extended family and I went to one of the games. And my beloved Bernie hit another home run ... just for me.

Baseball, like Ithaca’s State Theatre — which just celebrated its 80th anniversary — is one of those institutions that you can lean on through the good times and bad. But in the last years of the 20th century, both have suffered from scandal or neglect and undergone “renovations” in order to survive, and some may ask if all the heartbreak that we spectators (whether of a game or a show) are put through is worth it.

In these particular cases, at least, I believe that the answer is as clear as the sounds coming from the crowd when my heroes, Williams and O’Neill, hit those home runs in my first Yankee game: “Hell, Yeah.”

Send any questions, comments, concerns and suggestions for the magazine to daze-editor@cornellsun.com.

Enjoy the show,

Allie Perez