Immaculate Grid Helps Me Get Back Into Baseball

Immaculate Grid helps me to enjoy baseball again, for the first time in a long time. If you're like me, it might help you, too.

If you're familiar, Immaculate Grid is a daily sports puzzle game. Similar to Wordle, there's a new game every 24 hours. But you're not trying to figure out the five-letter word of the day in six guesses. Instead, you have nine guesses (like strikes in an immaculate inning) to fill in your three-by-three grid of MLB players. (Since launching, the game has expanded into other sports, but I'm talkin' baseball).

Baseball was my first sports love. Which is funny, because I was a terrible baseball player. Actually, that's not quite true. In Little League, I was a decent pitcher. My dad worked with me to develop a sidearm delivery, which most kids didn't use, so that gave me an edge. Then, when I turned 12 and my body started changing, I lost my finesse. But I still played through age 15, albeit poorly.

I loved the game, though. I was born and raised a Red Sox fan, but soured on the team when they lost to the Mets in '86. I was 9. I decided to look into the history of some of the other teams, and what I found was a sport with a rich, complex, and controversial history. I became a Jackie Robinson fan, and a Brooklyn (L.A.) Dodgers fan by extension. I liked the Detroit Tigers, too.

I came back around to the Red Sox in the late '90s. That was the power of Pedro Martinez. The team was a tether to home for me when I was living in New Mexico in the early '00s. And when I came back home to host middays on WBCN, I experienced the low of being on the air in October of 2003 and the high of being on the air in October of 2004. I got to broadcast live from the roof of the Baseball Tavern during the Parade!

Then things got different. The Red Sox were still winning a World Series every few years, but it was almost by sheer, dumb luck. The team's ownership was changing course. Big Papi retired. Cornerstone players like Mookie Betts weren't resigned. The pandemic hit, and I stopped caring about the Red Sox, baseball, and sports in general. And in the last couple of years, the Red Sox haven't given me much reason to reinvest.

Then the Immaculate Grid came along. Here was a game that scratched my puzzle itch, but also got me back in touch with my inner baseball nerd. Oh, you want a Hall-of-Famer who played for the Reds? Johnny Bench would be the obvious choice. I'll give you deadballer Edd Roush. Someone who played for the A's and the Phillies? Jimmie Foxx, baby. He played for the Red Sox, too.

And the cool thing is? The more I play, the more I remember. A childhood of collecting baseball cards, visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown every few summers, and playing Legends of the Diamond on NES is helping me make my grid immaculate pretty much every day. And it's reminding me about that baseball is fun and games are fun, even when life isn't.

Hell, I might even throw on a Red Sox game. If they make the playoffs.

With the announcement yesterday that Red Sox legend David Ortiz will be enshrined in Cooperstown this summer, let's look at the other Hall of Fame Sox.

I've assembled a team of a dozen Baseball Hall-of-Famers who all went into the Hall with Sox caps on their plaques. Scroll through the lineup, vote for your favorite below, then yell at me on Facebook or Twitter for leaving Lefty Grove and Herb Pennock off the list.

Oh, and all of the images of the Hall of Fame plaques below are courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame official online store. You can buy 'em in postcard-form for only 99 cents!