The Ancient One is a baseball slut.  For her 70th birthday, I took her to a major league game in Texas.  We stayed at a crummy motel just to be near the stadium.  The next day, we took a hotel shuttle right to the front entrance; we went through the turnstile, checking our ticket stubs to determine how good our tickets really were.  I walked in front of TAO through the covered walkway and then.........WOW!  The whole of the stadium opened up to us, and Mother poked me in the back and said, “Stop....just stop.&nbs

p; Now, close your eyes and listen and smell the air.”  The stimuli was completely enticing -  the barking of food vendors, the crack of the bats during batting practice, the smell of popcorn and beer.  We must have looked strange to anyone who wasn’t a baseball aficionado, but those who were, totally understood our visual appreciation

That trip was 17 years ago...sheesh, time flies!  Now-a-days, she watches 2 and 3 games simultaneously on television, using that little PIP screen with one game down in the corner and the larger game on the screen...switching back and forth as the games progress.  I don’t like to watch baseball on TV.  The game suffers in that translation for me, but she still expects me to follow the teams through the season, checking the sports pages to see who is leading the American League East, etc.  I’ve moved on to golf, which could beg the question, “Which game is more boring on television?

She called me into her boudoir suite the other night to tell me that the World Series was on.  Huh?  I pride myself on keeping up with things, and I hadn’t heard or read about the Series having started.  I explained to her that the games she was watching were precursors to the Series, but she DEMANDED that I hadn’t a clue what I was talking about.  And, when that woman thinks she’s sure of something, well, there’s just no arguing.  The aging process can be scary for a younger person who watches their parents’ brain cells slowly morph into a lace-like pattern, leaving whole chunks of memory in it’s broken wake

After two days of trying to explain to her what in the hell was going on, I Googled, Baseball for Dummies, printed out the divisions, the games going on and what to expect when the Series DOES start.  I used the quarter-final / semi-final analogy to her, and she was PISSED!  She was mostly pissed to have been proven wrong.  Then, after begrudgingly accepting defeat, she was THRILLED that this new arrangement in her head meant that there would be more baseball for her to watch

As I walked out of her room during the Yankees sweep of the Twins in the AL division series, I stopped, closed my eyes and listened to the screaming fans, the food barkers and the crack of the bat.  I could almost smell the hot dogs, which made me smile.  No matter what was going on...she was happy as a wife who sees a double chin on her husband’s old girl friend

KK

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I went to a baseball game in NYC when KK was married to husband #3.  I loved it.  It was like going to the circus.  It was outside, they sold food there, and the performers were graceful and brave.  Also, they didn’t mind kicking up some dirt when need be.  The only things missing were the elephants and clowns.  Although I must say, watching a manager and an ump ‘get into it’ was pretty close to clownage of the best sort

I hate watching baseball on television.  It’s just not the same.  It seems too slow, and there’s too much talking between the action.  When you’re actually at the game you are checking things out in the arena, and you can people-watch and watch the players adjusting their packages in the dugout.  They don’t show that on TV

When we were growing up in Midland, Texas, we went down to the ‘Ida Jo Moore Park’ every Saturday morning to play baseball.  I even had a mitt and we had bats too.  I can remember the excitement as we heard the screen door slam behind us and ran down to the park to pick teams and see who else was there.  I played center field and was a good batter

That’s sort of how I am now.  I’m out in center field a lot of the time, waiting for that one ball that will come into my area and feeling the thrill of catching it.  Sometimes you drop it and that’s a drag, but you can redeem yourself when you’re up at bat, and everyone knows you’re good at that

I think I’m in the seventh inning stretch right now.  I’m still a good batter and am now being considered for pitcher.  The game is on, better than ever.  I’ll be pitching no-hitters from now on.  It’s too enjoyable to finish though, so I plan to go into overtime

SalGal