The fall classic is winding down. Sorry Houston fans but it does seem to be winding down despite some very valiant efforts on the Astros’ part. I mean it. Last year St. Louis just sort of rolled over and handed it to Boston. Houston is trying and it shows. Plus, I am not really a Sox fan so if Houston makes a comeback, ok then. Yet with only four games left (maximum) it is indeed winding down, and as it does, I take time to reflect on my baseball-laden upbringing.
My father was a baseball nut. That term doesn’t even convey it. Worship might. My mom was right behind him. They went to ballgames, and hockey games, for dates. My mom used to listen to Twins games on the radio way up in Northern Minnesota (so far north that she was without a TV until she was a teenager, hence the radio). My dad was almost a pro umpire and he used to do games for the park district. I can still see him in his uniform yelling “STRIIIIKE!”
When I was four, my dad took me with him and my sister to my first baseball game. We were up on the upper deck on the outfield in the Metrodome. I remember that game because it was the Twins’ last game in their old uniforms and they threw them up into the stand. I was there, looming over Kirby Puckett’s head. From that point on, my family regularly attended games—two or three each summer—sneaking in our own food, mashed into hard blue plastic chairs, staring up at that domed roof.
Are there many families who plan summer vacations around baseball? Mine did. One year we drove out east, and made a mandatory stop in Cooperstown, New York to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum(random trivia: did you know Cooperstown is named after the family of author James Fenimore Cooper? Do you think my baseball-crazy family cared?). We spent the entire day there!
The next year we went west to Colorado where we saw a baseball game (Rockies vs. Cubs who my sister loved at the time) and saw another one in Kansas City en route to home. One summer my parents even decided on a mini-trip to Iowa, with me, to see the Field of Dreams. On yet another side note: gentleman, please answer this question honestly, does that movie make you cry or tear up? I was talking to two guys last week and they admitted it did. I thought that was so unexpected yet understandably awesome.
After my sister and I abandoned family vacations, my parents continued to see games on their travels and returned to Cooperstown in 2001 when Kirby Puckett was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
With such baseball enthusiasm surrounding me, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I know a thing or thousand about it. It has seeped into my brain where it sits waiting to spill out. Is it any surprise that I can explain the infield-fly rule? You should not be surprised, as my friend C was that I could explain to her why it was a big deal when the Yankees played the Cubs a few years ago, thus heading into an intricate thesis on inter-league play. I know what a DH is, and who uses it. I know who the Pride of the Yankees is, and why they were to stinking proud. And my father instructed me over and over as to why Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, and most of the other Black Sox weren’t really guilty and need to be let back into baseball.
Despite attempts on my part to the contrary, I have been fed on America’s favorite pastime. Sometimes, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s not that I want to like it, it’s that I do. Cause you didn’t grow up in Paul and Pat Ricci’s house and not emerge with a little baseball-love.
