WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — I chose to cover the A’s home opener over going to Stockton for Cal League opening day. It’s not the first Cal League opening day I’ve missed, but those others were for reasons beyond my control. This one was my choice.

I’d never gotten a chance to cover an MLB opening day until now. I’d been to one as a fan years ago, but it’s certainly different than actually working the game. I remember going as a fan being fun, which isn’t a word I use to describe how I feel about baseball as of late.

I told a friend last week that whoever said that if “you turn what you love into your job, you’ll never work a day in your life” was a liar. I took what I turned into a special interest when I was 17 into something I write about as a career. I used to devour every game I could on MLB.tv, which could explain why Some Guys I end up Remembering are from the late ‘00s and early ‘10s.

When I’m not working a game, I hardly ever watch at all. Watching a game at home just feels like it’s work. The last thing I want to think about in my downtime is capitalism, so I choose to read books or watch TV. Maybe I’ll finally catch up on Andor like I’ve been meaning to².

Coming off covering the World Baseball Classic, though, reminded me what I loved so much about baseball. There are real people everywhere — people who run the gamut of emotions with every pitch of the game until the last out. On the field, in the stands, wherever. It’s a silly game, but it means so much to people. It meant so much to me, once upon a time. I wonder if it’s still there.

Being on the labor beat means you’re exposed to the stench of capitalism, where the bottom line is always the biggest thing and it doesn’t matter how it’s achieved. This year, the big talks are about implementing a salary cap/floor system and will undoubtedly be all over the headlines leading up to the expiration of the CBA on Dec. 1.

But there are people behind these things, too. People who play the game for 162 regular season games a year and do their jobs. Real people are behind the labor of the game. There are guys on the field who’ll be affected by whatever the outcome is of the negotiations — and affected more than the bottom line that a billionaire makes.

It’s easy to get jaded on this beat, especially when you’re also an economist. I could let it wear me down; I have in the past.

Or I could be extremely silly and skeet as such on game coverage.

I keep calling the converted suite that serves as the media room the “press balcony” because two rows of media seating are the second deck of the ballpark outside of the suite itself. It’s a Triple-A ballpark that was never really meant host MLB games; the configuration of the park is not unlike other Triple-A parks built at that time.

Maybe I just have to embrace the absurdity of Sutter Health Park, an entirely preventable situation if not for the bottom line. There’s still stories to be told about the people who call that park their team’s home.