I’ve become a baseball junkie. 
When I wrote of baseball season starting up this spring, what I failed to mention is that my life, my spring, summer and fall life would revolve around it.
You see, hubbs is a hound dog about baseball. No games are missed. None. So, by default, so was I.
I was criticized recently by someone who told me that she doesn’t believe in following a team just because her husband does. She’s a big sports fan. Huge. Much more involved than I am. But, in a way, her comment left me reeling because she really was calling me …. inauthentic.
If she only knew that yes, I might have started out that way, but I’ve long since graduated from just a “follower’s” role. I might have started as the wife who was busy doing other things while he watched the games. I might have started as the wife who decided to bring her book out to the garage while he watched the games. I might have started that way, but that’s not where it’s ending.
The shift happened a few summers ago when hubbs dashed into the house to and he heard my shrieks coming from the garage. He heard my cheers and when he returned, it was me who “scored” him. The next shift came when I found myself watching even when he wasn’t home.
Then, while waiting at the chiropractor’s office Monday, I noted happily that they had the Tigers on in the p/t room. I overheard a patient snap about how much she hates baseball. How boring she thought it was. Her disgust was apparent, even from 20 feet away. And I felt it, a glimmer of indignation that she’d so casually disregarded the sport I had grown to love. I didn’t say anything but wished I could say “if you only knew.” Monday night found me glued and hubbs wasn’t home. My whoops and hollers drew in our youngest who became transfixed in the bottom of the tenth.
Baseball … it’s like that. For me anyways.
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Baseball? It’s just a game – as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It’s a sport, business – and sometimes even religion. ~Ernie Harwell, “The Game for All America,” 1955
