It's never too late for baseball

I love base­ball. I wish I had loved it earlier.

Actu­ally, I didn’t know I loved it until I moved to Philadel­phia back in the sev­en­ties. Hav­ing grown up in the Cleve­land area there was never much empha­sis on base­ball dur­ing the sixties.

But in Philadel­phia they piped audio from games over loud­speak­ers down­town. Strangers on the street would query, “Have you heard the score?” The sta­dium would be filled daily with ver­bal reac­tions to each and every pitch.

It was the time of Mike Schmidt, Greg Luzin­ski, Larry Bowa, Greg Mad­dux and ulti­mately, Pete Rose. I was hooked.

My hus­band Joe likes to tell peo­ple that I started to date him because he had sea­son tick­ets to Phillies games. That’s really only par­tially true. Actu­ally, it didn’t hurt.

Joe and I moved back to Ohio the very year that the Phils won the World Series and instead of sit­ting in the stands, we were watch­ing on TV as Tug McGraw hurled him­self into the air after toss­ing that final strike and win­ning the series.

Then, many years passed. Four years ago we had a chance to buy into a group that held sea­son tick­ets to the Indi­ans. Up to that point we had had sea­son passes to Cedar Point, but had decided to give those up since in our last visit to the park all we did was talk about how this ride wrenched our backs and that ride hurt our necks. Age had taken its toll and base­ball seemed safer.

I became imme­di­ately trans­fixed with the sport, the team, the Jake (um Pro­gres­sive field), the SHOW!

Now, I scour the paper for news of the team. I devour the box scores. (Last year I checked daily to make sure there were some teams worse than the Tribe. This year has been hap­pier, even if we are tee­ter­ing a bit right now.) Bot­tom line: I AM a fan.

So, why do I wish this love of the game had come to me ear­lier? It’s because of Auntie.

lla Mered­ith was my mom’s aunt by mar­riage. Back in the for­ties her hus­band left her, which was unheard of dur­ing that decade. She came to stay with us for the week­end and ended up stay­ing 10 years.

She was mad at mom and dad for get­ting preg­nant with me. They already had two chil­dren, so what did they need another for? And then, after I was born, she was mad that I was a girl. They could have at least had a boy.

It took six weeks for her to even look at me, but once she did, I became HERS. Aun­tie made me a pro­fi­cient card shuf­fler at age three. She braided my long hair daily with great care and always made me my favorite cin­na­mon toast. We were con­stant companions.

There came a time when she had to move out because my grand­mother needed too much care to live alone any­more. Aun­tie was set­tled into a room in a house down the street and I vis­ited her every Sun­day. We played canasta until her sis­ter, Smitty, moved in with her, then we grad­u­ated to three handed pinochle.

Aun­tie loved the Tribe fueled by the mem­ory from the for­ties and of the 1954 team, but I wanted noth­ing to do with it. I sit now in our fab­u­lous seats right above home plate and think about Auntie.

I used to make her choose. If the Tribe was on Sun­day after­noon, I’d tell her she could have the TV or a card game, but not both. Invari­ably she chose me. See, if only I’d loved base­ball ear­lier, we could have cheered the Tribe on together.

Since there are no do-overs in life, I’ll have to con­tent myself in embrac­ing that part of Aun­tie that will always live within me as Hafner smacks a good one or Asdrubal makes a ridicu­lously incred­i­ble play. If only I’d come to love it earlier.

The Tribe’s slo­gan this year is “What IF?” What if Aun­tie and I could have together hollered “Go Tribe!”

Posted by Pat Price on Aug 4 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.