Dreams of baseball
Sep. 23rd, 2005 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIf you're looking for a pithy informative post about the all American sport, this isn't it. I would not describe myself as a sports fanatic, those who know me well, or believe they do, do we ever know one another well? Would describe me as quite the reverse.
My earliest memory of baseball was as a small child playing a neighborhood game in our front lawn in West Chester, PA. We used a tree as second base and the driveway as first. The nieghborhood boy, tall lanky with blue black hair and blue eyes, taught me how to hold the bat. Left hand on the bottom, right on top, get your grip right, no no the other way, I always got it wrong somehow. And the sandy haired freckle-faced blond, throwing the ball. I remember swinging but never quite connecting. But they were patient and tried more than once to get to do it right. I could not have been much older than eight at the time. Years later, after graduating from high school, I met the neighbor boy again, his hairline receding, a bit of a belly, and working as used car salesmen. Not the slender baseball jock of my youth.
When we moved to Kansas City in the 1980s, I remember my father getting coveted tickets to the opening game of the World's Series. The Phillies were playing the Kansas City Royals. A major game for my Dad, since the Phillies were his home team, the team of his youth, and the Royals the team of his middle-age. Either way he was happy. Dad was odd about baseball, actually most sports to be honest, he watched them intermittently on the tv set. If the game wasn't going well or it was a lack-lustre season, he'd wander outside, smoke his pipe, stare at the trees, rake leaves, or read a book. There were times, he seemed to prefer listening to the game on the radio in our back yard than watching it on the tv in the living room. I would join him, just to smell the comforting musky scent of the pipe and if I was patient, asked the right question at the commerical, he might explain a little of the game to me. My father is a story-teller, he plays with words and unlike me, tends to be short on the babble. You have to listen closely though, since he's prone to muttering, and tends to be a little soft-spoken.
At any rate, he had tickets, two, prime seats. And he asked kidbro to go with him. It was one of the few times in my life that I remember resenting my brother. When I whined to mom, she reminded me none too gently that I wasn't really into baseball and it was a guy thing. It was true enough, the not being into part. I was horrid at playing the game, when we got to play it. Picked last at recess and usually sent to the outfield, where I sat somewhat bored. Dreading having my turn at bat, since I never could quite make out where the ball was coming from, I always miscalculated it by an inch. The mit, huge and awkward around my hand, the soft smell of leather, I remember absently chewing on it as a child. While in the back yard, Dad and kidbro would throw for hours, kidbro's fast ball hurting Dad's hand. In elementary through a good portion of junior high school, Kidbro collected sports trophies the way some kids collect mosquito bites. His fast ball was legion. One couch commented to my parents how they'd never seen a kid as cordinated at an early age as my kid brother. I remember looking at the shelves of his bedroom decorated with little league, basketball, swimming, and soccer trophies.
He didn't have to practice as a kid, he was just good at it. It's when he got older that the whole practicing thing caught up with him and he more or less lost interest.
In junior high, I used to go to kidbro's little league games. Dad was one of the coaches. Our whole family would pile into the station wagon and drive out to ballfields, way out in Lenexa, Kansas. We'd sit on the bleachers and at half-time, I'd be allowed to have my pick of treats at the concession stand. Often going for the "big league chew" bubble gum that came in strips - a child's version of chewing tobacco. With a charicature of George Brett on the front of the package. I remember trying to chew the gum all at once, my mouth sore, blowing bubbles half the size of my face, which often stuck to nose cheeks and eyelids once popped. I don't see these packages of gum any more, but then this was before it was discovered that chewing tobacco caused mouth cancer. My mother blames George Brett and chewing tobacco for getting Kidbro addicted to nicotine. That's right, it's all George Brett's fault. The other favorite treat was one that came with a sort of edible stick and had packets of different colored sugar powder inside. No wonder I had so much energy as a child, I was high on sugar.
I think I only watched half the games I went to. They were kidbro's games after all and I was usually drug along as a matter of course. One of the few games I stayed home from, I ended up having to help a friend of my father's find. I vaguely remember navigating a weird winding drive through the back-roads of Johnson County, Kansas with an old college buddy of my Dad's, a man my father hadn't seen in ten years who'd popped up one day and decided to stay with us. Interesting guy. Tour guide. Traveled the world. On the drive he regaled me with tales of his travels and being a writer regaled me with dreams of being published. At home I gave him a crudely written novel, hammered out in a series of three-ring binders. I dread to think what he thought of it. And cringe at the memory of giving it to him to read. Yet, it is oddly reassuring to think that he may have been as bored at kidbro's game as I was, we were united in boredom, tee hee. I also think he enjoyed teaching me how to play pool later on, we had teamed up again Dad and kidbro.
The other baseball game, a little league game that kid-bro played, that echoes in my memory is the one where I got hit in the head with the baseball.
Like I said, I only watched half the games I went to - most of the time I had my nose deep in the pages of a book. Usually sat smack dab in the middle of the stands, hidden from view, devouring words, my mind and soul miles away in another world. Kid bro recalls the scene better than I, he'd after all watched the ball pop over the fence and head towards the stands. Saw everyone scatter madly for cover, while I, completely unaware of the world outside my book, got clobbered. I think he enjoyed it just a little too much. God did not create kid brothers, the devil did. Except of course for the fact that my parents rushed me to the emergency room mid-game and had me get an MRI. Probably because the ball knocked me off the stands and out of the count. I vaguely remember staring up in my parents worried faces. I think that night my mother woke me up every ten minutes to ensure I didn't have a concussion. I didn't, just an incredibly bad headache.
As the years passed, baseball had intermittent interest for me. I adored the game in gym class - possibly because I got to play catcher instead of outfield and I was a frigging good catcher. Loved interacting with the batter and the pitcher. Dad would take me to Royals games and tell me to play close attention to the couches at the bases as well as the signals the catcher gave the pitcher. I think I only loved baseball when my Dad was around explaining it to me. It was his love of the game that made me smile. Without him there, it always seemed somewhat empty somehow.
Except in College, freshman year, when the Kansas City Royals beat the St. Louis Cardinals and won the Worlds Series. I remember staying up all night in the lounge and celebrating the win with a gal from my high school who'd ended up going to the same College, I did. We were the only two from our high school that ended up at Colorado College. And we were more or less alone in the student lounge jumping up and down as the series drew to its end. Yelling our heads off. People had laid down bets that the Cardinals would win. The 90's may have been the decade of the Yankees, but the 80's were the Golden Years of baseball in my mind, when George Brett hit for the KC Royals and it wasn't about who had the most money or million dollar salaries, so much as just playing the game. Coming from KC and PA, I don't think its possible for me to root for the Yankees. And spending 6 years pushing my way through the sweating hordes of obnoxious Yankee fans, probably didn't help. Yet, yet, I did celebrate their win in 1999 and I adored the subway series. In fact, I think it was in 1998 or 1999 that a work colleague and I skipped out of work early and bought tickets to a double-header - the longest running double-header in Yankee's history. Having to go to work the next morning, we skipped out around 9pm, the game had started around 4pm. It was in it's 13th inning. We learned the next morning that they played both games and did not finish into the wee hours of the morning.
I don't know much about the game of baseball. Don't quote me stats or talk about runs or who won what series. That stuff goes in one ear and out the other. But I do know what it feels like to have your home team win or watch your brother hit a home run, or to hit one yourself. What it's like to sit outside in the warm summer air with your Dad while a baseball game hums in the background. I dream of those days. For me, I think I prefer the idea of baseball over the reality, the dream of it. The dream of playing catcher or running the bases. Or pitching the fastball. The feel of the leather glove on my hand. Or the quick pick up game in the front yard when I was a kid. Baseball was the first organized sport I learned. Possibly the first game anyone tried to teach me. I sucked at it royally, but there was a certain magic to it that lingers in my heart and when I think about it, I smell my Dad's pipe, see the twin fountains of Royals Stadium, and hear the hum of the radio in the background as hamburgers smoke on the grill.
My earliest memory of baseball was as a small child playing a neighborhood game in our front lawn in West Chester, PA. We used a tree as second base and the driveway as first. The nieghborhood boy, tall lanky with blue black hair and blue eyes, taught me how to hold the bat. Left hand on the bottom, right on top, get your grip right, no no the other way, I always got it wrong somehow. And the sandy haired freckle-faced blond, throwing the ball. I remember swinging but never quite connecting. But they were patient and tried more than once to get to do it right. I could not have been much older than eight at the time. Years later, after graduating from high school, I met the neighbor boy again, his hairline receding, a bit of a belly, and working as used car salesmen. Not the slender baseball jock of my youth.
When we moved to Kansas City in the 1980s, I remember my father getting coveted tickets to the opening game of the World's Series. The Phillies were playing the Kansas City Royals. A major game for my Dad, since the Phillies were his home team, the team of his youth, and the Royals the team of his middle-age. Either way he was happy. Dad was odd about baseball, actually most sports to be honest, he watched them intermittently on the tv set. If the game wasn't going well or it was a lack-lustre season, he'd wander outside, smoke his pipe, stare at the trees, rake leaves, or read a book. There were times, he seemed to prefer listening to the game on the radio in our back yard than watching it on the tv in the living room. I would join him, just to smell the comforting musky scent of the pipe and if I was patient, asked the right question at the commerical, he might explain a little of the game to me. My father is a story-teller, he plays with words and unlike me, tends to be short on the babble. You have to listen closely though, since he's prone to muttering, and tends to be a little soft-spoken.
At any rate, he had tickets, two, prime seats. And he asked kidbro to go with him. It was one of the few times in my life that I remember resenting my brother. When I whined to mom, she reminded me none too gently that I wasn't really into baseball and it was a guy thing. It was true enough, the not being into part. I was horrid at playing the game, when we got to play it. Picked last at recess and usually sent to the outfield, where I sat somewhat bored. Dreading having my turn at bat, since I never could quite make out where the ball was coming from, I always miscalculated it by an inch. The mit, huge and awkward around my hand, the soft smell of leather, I remember absently chewing on it as a child. While in the back yard, Dad and kidbro would throw for hours, kidbro's fast ball hurting Dad's hand. In elementary through a good portion of junior high school, Kidbro collected sports trophies the way some kids collect mosquito bites. His fast ball was legion. One couch commented to my parents how they'd never seen a kid as cordinated at an early age as my kid brother. I remember looking at the shelves of his bedroom decorated with little league, basketball, swimming, and soccer trophies.
He didn't have to practice as a kid, he was just good at it. It's when he got older that the whole practicing thing caught up with him and he more or less lost interest.
In junior high, I used to go to kidbro's little league games. Dad was one of the coaches. Our whole family would pile into the station wagon and drive out to ballfields, way out in Lenexa, Kansas. We'd sit on the bleachers and at half-time, I'd be allowed to have my pick of treats at the concession stand. Often going for the "big league chew" bubble gum that came in strips - a child's version of chewing tobacco. With a charicature of George Brett on the front of the package. I remember trying to chew the gum all at once, my mouth sore, blowing bubbles half the size of my face, which often stuck to nose cheeks and eyelids once popped. I don't see these packages of gum any more, but then this was before it was discovered that chewing tobacco caused mouth cancer. My mother blames George Brett and chewing tobacco for getting Kidbro addicted to nicotine. That's right, it's all George Brett's fault. The other favorite treat was one that came with a sort of edible stick and had packets of different colored sugar powder inside. No wonder I had so much energy as a child, I was high on sugar.
I think I only watched half the games I went to. They were kidbro's games after all and I was usually drug along as a matter of course. One of the few games I stayed home from, I ended up having to help a friend of my father's find. I vaguely remember navigating a weird winding drive through the back-roads of Johnson County, Kansas with an old college buddy of my Dad's, a man my father hadn't seen in ten years who'd popped up one day and decided to stay with us. Interesting guy. Tour guide. Traveled the world. On the drive he regaled me with tales of his travels and being a writer regaled me with dreams of being published. At home I gave him a crudely written novel, hammered out in a series of three-ring binders. I dread to think what he thought of it. And cringe at the memory of giving it to him to read. Yet, it is oddly reassuring to think that he may have been as bored at kidbro's game as I was, we were united in boredom, tee hee. I also think he enjoyed teaching me how to play pool later on, we had teamed up again Dad and kidbro.
The other baseball game, a little league game that kid-bro played, that echoes in my memory is the one where I got hit in the head with the baseball.
Like I said, I only watched half the games I went to - most of the time I had my nose deep in the pages of a book. Usually sat smack dab in the middle of the stands, hidden from view, devouring words, my mind and soul miles away in another world. Kid bro recalls the scene better than I, he'd after all watched the ball pop over the fence and head towards the stands. Saw everyone scatter madly for cover, while I, completely unaware of the world outside my book, got clobbered. I think he enjoyed it just a little too much. God did not create kid brothers, the devil did. Except of course for the fact that my parents rushed me to the emergency room mid-game and had me get an MRI. Probably because the ball knocked me off the stands and out of the count. I vaguely remember staring up in my parents worried faces. I think that night my mother woke me up every ten minutes to ensure I didn't have a concussion. I didn't, just an incredibly bad headache.
As the years passed, baseball had intermittent interest for me. I adored the game in gym class - possibly because I got to play catcher instead of outfield and I was a frigging good catcher. Loved interacting with the batter and the pitcher. Dad would take me to Royals games and tell me to play close attention to the couches at the bases as well as the signals the catcher gave the pitcher. I think I only loved baseball when my Dad was around explaining it to me. It was his love of the game that made me smile. Without him there, it always seemed somewhat empty somehow.
Except in College, freshman year, when the Kansas City Royals beat the St. Louis Cardinals and won the Worlds Series. I remember staying up all night in the lounge and celebrating the win with a gal from my high school who'd ended up going to the same College, I did. We were the only two from our high school that ended up at Colorado College. And we were more or less alone in the student lounge jumping up and down as the series drew to its end. Yelling our heads off. People had laid down bets that the Cardinals would win. The 90's may have been the decade of the Yankees, but the 80's were the Golden Years of baseball in my mind, when George Brett hit for the KC Royals and it wasn't about who had the most money or million dollar salaries, so much as just playing the game. Coming from KC and PA, I don't think its possible for me to root for the Yankees. And spending 6 years pushing my way through the sweating hordes of obnoxious Yankee fans, probably didn't help. Yet, yet, I did celebrate their win in 1999 and I adored the subway series. In fact, I think it was in 1998 or 1999 that a work colleague and I skipped out of work early and bought tickets to a double-header - the longest running double-header in Yankee's history. Having to go to work the next morning, we skipped out around 9pm, the game had started around 4pm. It was in it's 13th inning. We learned the next morning that they played both games and did not finish into the wee hours of the morning.
I don't know much about the game of baseball. Don't quote me stats or talk about runs or who won what series. That stuff goes in one ear and out the other. But I do know what it feels like to have your home team win or watch your brother hit a home run, or to hit one yourself. What it's like to sit outside in the warm summer air with your Dad while a baseball game hums in the background. I dream of those days. For me, I think I prefer the idea of baseball over the reality, the dream of it. The dream of playing catcher or running the bases. Or pitching the fastball. The feel of the leather glove on my hand. Or the quick pick up game in the front yard when I was a kid. Baseball was the first organized sport I learned. Possibly the first game anyone tried to teach me. I sucked at it royally, but there was a certain magic to it that lingers in my heart and when I think about it, I smell my Dad's pipe, see the twin fountains of Royals Stadium, and hear the hum of the radio in the background as hamburgers smoke on the grill.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 06:44 am (UTC)I'm glad you find joy in your baseball memories (and family memories, hand in foot), as do I. However, this time of year finds me rabidly rooting for my Yankees to win their 27th World Series title. I can't help it. I'm a born and bred Bronx girl Yankees fan, and I bleed pinstripes. **grins**
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 09:58 am (UTC)