This
one is for Bill.
When my husband and I joined our lives
12 years ago, he brought to the marriage three adult sons, one grandchild (to
be joined by four more over the ensuing years), a gazillion boxes of books, and
a love of baseball.
I quickly came to love the sons and
their families.
And I made room for many of the books
among my own large collection.
Baseball, however, was another
story. Making my peace with that one has
been the work of years.
Perhaps my backstory will help to
explain my resistance.
Except for the occasional childhood
game of stickball in the street and some mandatory games of basketball and
field hockey in high-school gym class, I have never played a team sport. There weren’t organized leagues for girls
when I was young, and, in truth, I probably wouldn’t have been interested. I spent most of my girlhood with my nose in a
book or running around with my friends, playing games involving imaginary
characters. There was lots of built-in
walking and bike-riding in those days of free-range children, but not many
adult-organized sports outside of Little League, which was still a boys-only
activity. And as an adult, I’ve been
more of a walking, swimming, yoga-izing type of exerciser.
And then there is this: I was born without a sports-watching
gene. Sure, I went to some football
games in high school. It was nice to be outside
with my friends in the autumn, but I didn’t pay much attention to the game and
never learned the rules. I also went to
some basketball games in high school and even pretty much caught onto the rules.
And that, with the exception of some
excitement the year the Trailblazers won the NBA championship (1977) and a
couple of years cheering for a daughter’s volley ball team, pretty much describes
the extent of my sports fandom.
So, there I was 12 years ago, blissful in my sports-free world, cheerfully
unable to follow the constant talk of teams and their wins and losses at my
work place, scornful of those who wasted hours of their lives in darkened bars
and family rooms screaming at and for their favorite teams, when baseball walked into
my life and demanded my attention.
Mind you, I wasn’t introduced to the world
of baseball by just anyone. The man with
whom I had cast my lot wasn’t just a baseball fan. He was a rabid and perpetually disappointed
fan of the Chicago Cubs, the team, as I was to learn, with the longest play-off
losing streak in the history of baseball.
I had married a man who had listened to the Cubs on the radio as a child
in Indianapolis (a city without a major league baseball team), and who had
spent the decades since dreaming of the day when they would play in the World
Series, something that hadn’t happened since 1945, when, sadly, they lost.
What was I to do? I didn’t care about baseball; when I was a
kid, my best friend’s dad used to watch the game and it looked really boring to
me. Still, I felt fortunate that I
hadn’t married a man who spent the better part of every week watching ESPN. We didn’t even have ESPN – still don’t. The least I could do was look into this
baseball thing that was so important to him and only really occupied him during
the play-offs.
So, after we were married, I started
watching the World Series with him each year.
Not every game and not every inning of those games that I did
watch. But I hung out with him and I
learned a few things, such as: The game
is mostly about the pitching. Who
knew? I would have thought, if I had thought
about it at all, that it was all about the hitting.
And then, 2016 rolled around and there
were rumblings that this was the year, the year the Cubs would finally make it
to the Series. And I watched my husband
grow cautiously hopeful. I watched some
play-off games with him. I even texted
my excitement to a sports-loving friend as the Cubs looked like they would win
the pennant. Yes, I, Ms.
I-don’t-care-about-sports, was excited, drawn in by the Cubbies’ mystique.
I found out that watching baseball
could be—dare I say it?—fun, not to mention a great distraction from a long and
ugly political season.
And then, the remarkable, the almost
unprecedented – the Cubs in the World Series.
And I folded. The tension was too
much. I kept leaving the room, rather
than watch as the Cubs snatched defeat from the jaws of success again and
again. They would break Bill’s heart. I couldn’t bear to watch.
Except.
It wasn’t over.
They came back. Back from a 3–1 game deficit. Winning first one game. And then another. And then . . .
(Here
is where I stopped writing to watch the seventh game.)
You
know the ending. You know (unless you
have been living under a rock) that the Cubs ended their 108-year World Series
drought tonight.
And, yes, it’s only a game. A game that will make the players and their
handlers and coaches rich whether or not they win. It will not end world hunger or solve the
problems of humankind. But it was fun to
root for the underdogs, even if I accidently called a “full count” a “full
house,” and referred to “overtime” instead of “extra innings.”
It is good to watch people do something at which they are excellent. It is good
to see success where success has been delayed.
And if we elect our first female President during the same week that the
Cubs won the Series, who knows what else might be possible.
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