I learned this weekend on Twitter that I'm clearly in the minority, or at least those who don't like DST are much more vocal about it than those who do. And, considering my reason for liking DST, it's actually a bit surprising so many somewhat like-minded people hate it.
First, I can understand some of the grumbling. If you work Sundays, or otherwise have somewhere to be in the morning, losing that one hour of sleep is certainly a drag. Also, if you have kids (as I do...well, I have a kid), modifying bed time can be a royal pain-in-the-ass.
But, the reason I'm a fan of daylight savings time is baseball. Not Major League Baseball, of course. Not necessarily even organized baseball, for that matter.
Adding an extra hour of daylight to each evening allowed me as a kid to play ball with my friends down the street until sometime around 8:30ish, when our moms would start calling for us to come home, or when one of us would totally lose a fly ball in the gray sky, or when the batter could barely make out the incoming pitch.
That extra hour would also allow Little League games to start at 6pm, so dads (or moms) who were coaches could get there in time after work, or it simply would allow parents to feed their kids and get them to the game in time.
That's what daylight savings time came to symbolize for me as a young baseball player, even if baseball was far from the reason for DST's existence.
And that's also how I'll choose to think of DST as a parent. It will give me time to throw the ball around with my son after dinner and, if he chooses to play baseball (fingers crossed) to make it to his games in time.
So, the struggle to move up bed time by an hour, while certainly not an enjoyable part of DST, is well worth it, in my opinion.
Long Live Daylight Savings Time. Because...well, Baseball.
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