the game

although this happened a week and a day ago, i'm still turning it over and over in my head. it was one of those moments - perhaps i should capitalize it - Those Moments - that seem to linger longer than usual, and have the mark of becoming a wonderful, forever memory.

my dad's birthday was approaching, about a month ago, and i sighed out loud one night, "i just don't know what to get him!" m overheard me (i sigh loudly) and said, quite inspirationally, "well, why don't we get box seats to a tides game?" it took a moment to process what he said because a) it's been years since i even thought about the tides (our area's answer to minor league baseball) and b) because it was so unexpected for him to actually have an idea like that. normally when i say i cannot think of a gift for my dad for christmas/father's day/birthday, he always commiserates but we can never come up with anything.

once my brain wrapped around the idea, i realized what a stupendously terrific idea it was. it was terrific on so many levels - it would be j's first "real" baseball game, it would be my dad's first game in a long time, it would be their first game together, it would be a chance for d to spend time with my dad while he is here, and so many other things. it was a winner on all fronts! add in the fact "box seats" for a minor-league game around here are a whopping $11 apiece, and you have a real solution to the age-old dilemma of what to buy the grandpa who has everything. :o) add in to that the fact that the tides were actually playing a home series against columbus ON my dad's birthday, and it was meant to be. absolutely meant to be.

so come the birthday day, 21st of july, we all traipsed to my dad's house to surprise him. mom was in on the gig, of course, but dad had no idea. he thought only that we were coming over to visit him and perhaps have dinner with him for his birthday. when we got there, i gave j the tickets to present to dad, and whispered instructions on what to say.

all alight, j ran into the house, and very self-importantly paraded over to my dad. in a clarion-clear voice, glancing occasionally at me for prompting, he proclaimed, "grandaddy! you have a date with us tonight. for a BASEBALL GAME." produced the tickets as if they were mini Oscar statuettes, and my dad was finally, for once in his life, rendered quite speechless with surprise. ;o) mission accomplished! score one for us! lol

now, in these parts of the south where we live, our summers are predictably hot, humid, muggy, sweltering, slavishly drippy with condensation, you name it. i always tell folk who are not familiar with our summers that they will feel as if they can swim through the air. i, personally, love it wildly. i've grown up in it, and it welcomes me like an old friend each and every summer - i suffer, in the truest sense of the word, through each winter. fall and spring are tolerable because they tend to be largely on the warmer side of the spectrum and still moist-aired, but winter is the bane of my existence. if i could hibernate, i would, gladly!

but i digress.

july and august are our dog days of summer, as they probably are in most locations. that is when it is the hottest, the most humid, the muggiest, the most gloriously limpid. however...i firmly believe Someone created - out of his book of days - the perfect day for us. that saturday dawned, bright, crisp, clear - and COOL. it felt like early october outside. we stepped outdoors, and exclaimed all of one voice how absolutely astoundingly wonderful it felt. the sky was not the cobalt blue of summer; not the achingly bright sun-centered spectacle of beaches and coconut oil and sand and waves. it was the warmer, mellower, friendlier blue - crisp and clear, but not quite as brilliantine - of fall. the breeze was not warm - it was tinged with cool promise. the sun shone, but not with its usual intensity. it was actually cool enough that i grabbed a light sweatjacket on my way out the door for j, as it was a night game.

after much discussion as to how we would all fit into one car, we finally jockeyed into position. i had the unenviable position of being wedged between my dad (aka nascar wannabe) and m (aka mr. i do not like other people driving me around). the baseball park is only about 15 minutes from my parents' house, but it was a hair-raising 15 minutes. m spent the better part of the journey gripping my knee in a death grip while i facetiously joked about dad drafting off the car in front of him. ;o) ha. ha. ha.

but we did make it, sound of life and limb, and all tumbled out of the car. in retrospect, it must have appeared highly amusing to see five grown adults (three of whom are over 6' tall) and a 5-year-old all come out of a grand marquis sedan. lol! by now, it was approaching 7 pm, with the first ball scheduled for 7:15. the day had waned considerably, and the light was lower - dappled sunlight dancing through the leaves, and the park seemed to gleam in the setting sun. people streamed toward the building in a steady flow, populated largely with smiles and nods, and i snapped the obligatory pic or two of the whole crew standing outside the park.

once inside, we quickly found our seats (dad and m both proved they are cut from the same cloth when they both insisted to me, several times each, that i was leading us in the wrong direction; when it became obvious i was not doing that, and our seats were found without mishap, they both fell shamefacedly silent). i then realized how amazing our seats were. we were on the first baseline, 3 rows up from the field, within spitting distance of the first baseman and the home team's dugout. j kept shrieking, at the top of his blessed five-year-old lungs, about everything. "mama, look! grass!" "mama, look! i see a picture of virginia tech!" (the park had a commemorative VT logo, and all the players had the VT logo on their left sleeves - very nice). "mama, look! popcorn!" "mama, look! baseballs!" and so on. he was so excited he almost could not sit still.

m then departed with d in tow to score drinks for us. we had eaten at my mom's house before getting there, so i actually managed to get to the third inning before caving to the all-time siren song of cotton candy. and yes, i ate it. all of it. two bags! YEAH! i love cotton candy.

anyway, that's beside the point. this is about the game, not about my apparent mission to rot every tooth out of my mouth. right?

the announcer asked us all to direct our attention up. we all, as one body, obligingly looked up. (side note - isn't it funny how humans, en masse, seem to become almost of one mind and one accord in situations like that? it's like pavlov's dogs - put a pack of humans in a confined space, and they'll obey any disembodied voice over an amplifier). there was an airplane waaaaaaaay up there. and i do mean WAAAAAAAAY up there. i had thought originally they might have the blue angels, since they do that a lot, but then i realized this was something quite different. i saw pink smoke. yes, pink. i thought, "pink smoke?" right about then, j shrieked, "mama, look! PINK SMOKE!" presto, insta-confirmation! we all mumbled to one another, "pink smoke? pink smoke?" like some bad LSD trippers at a woodstock concert. soon, we saw a little black dot identifiable as a human. the pink smoke, inexplicably, was emitting from his....heels?

with a little help from the disembodied voice, we soon came to learn that these were navy and seal parachutists, and that some of them had sort of mini rockets (j's reaction? "mama, look! LITTLE ROCKETS!") strapped to their shoes, which allowed them to JET across the sky, careen wildly in dizzying circles, spiral in long lazy loops downward, and every other manuever you can possibly think of. it was, to be perfectly colloquial about it, VERY COOL.

we all oohed and aahed appropriately, and clapped thunderously when they were all down. one of the most spectacular parts was when two of the parachutists linked LEGS, at the knees, and came down together, with two chutes, and did not separate until they were nearly at field level. that requires some kind of skill, i know it.

then a choir from a local church sang the national anthem. there is just something about hearing children's voices sing such a simple, stirring song. it truly was moving - they sang with such belief, such gusto, and such clear simplicity - no one could hear it and not be genuinely moved by it.

then the first pitch - i missed who threw it out because j was back in his "mama, look!" raptured routine. he was delighted to find out that the tides had a #8 (his number in tee ball last year) who ALSO happened to play shortstop and second base (a position he played several times last year). so i, of course, had to take approximately fifty pictures of this one player. every time he came to bat, "mama, look! there he is! take a picture!" lol

the game began at 7:15 pm eastern. at approximately 7:17 pm eastern, we realized A Problem with our seats. any left-handed batter would be 99.999999% more likely to foul in our direction. and given how low we were sitting.... it would be likely to be a harder-to-field ball than, say, a long lazy lofty pop fly. but then we reasoned, "well, how many players are lefty anyway?" come to find out, a bunch of them! i would say, conservatively, about 60% of the players who batted for the other team were lefty. a lot of the tides were, too.

this led to what was easily the most amusing (and paradoxically, sweetest) spectacle of the entire game. each time the player batted, m would leap from his seat and try to shield us all from the potential incoming bullet. bless his heart. :o) one line drive curved sharply foul and literally whizzed past our heads and narrowly missed a woman 2 rows back - she was holding a sleeping baby, and never even saw it coming. another foul ball arched lazily over us, and landed smack in the middle of someone's slushie. rainbow slushie ice chips went flying everywhere. quite a catch. i've heard of spitballs, but slushieballs?

throughout the game, i took no small amount of delight in watching my dad explain various parts of the game to j, who listened intently. i put them beside one another for that very purpose. as the day wore on, and daylight ceded to darkness, the lights became ever brighter, and the whole scene took on an almost artificial look. it felt a little bit like the first time i saw "the wizard of oz" - the scene when dorothy emerges from her drab, dull house, canted at a wild angle, and walks out into the insta-technicolor world of munchkinland. it felt like that. improbably brilliant, impossibly colorful. the grass was too green. the lights were too bright. even the colors of the clothing on people around me seemed brighter, more intense, than usual. it was almost surreal. and oh! the air - it smelled wonderful. mingled popcorn, cotton candy, food scents, plus the sweetness of a southern summer night, the smell of the field, everything. it was a heady rush. overwhelming, in the best way possible. and watching my boy - how bright his eyes were, the intense focus he brought to the game, the way he cheered and clapped for each hit no matter who was hitting. absolutely wonderful.

some interesting comments he made during the game:

shortly after arriving, he scanned both teams, and then proclaimed with a faint air of disappointment, "there are no girls playing!"

about halfway through the third inning, my father was explaining "intentional walk" to j, who listened to the whole explanation, then declared absolutely unequivocally, "well, that's just cheating." (i had to admit, he had a point)

frequently throughout the entire game: "mama, did you SEE that! mama, did you SEE that! mama, DID YOU SEE THAT????"

and, my favorite - he said this upon arriving, as we were taking everything in: "boy, i wish c was here." melted my heart to hear him say he wished his little sister were there with us. big hug for that one.

we also (of course) visited the gift shop, where he picked out a giant foam finger. d picked out a hat, and i got c a cute little pink shirt that had the Tides logo on it.

we did leave after the 7th inning, both to beat traffic and because my dad and j were both tired.

thinking back on it, the things i remember the most intensely are just the feelings of overwhelming love, thankfulness and gratitude that we could do that, all be there together, sharing that experience together, and a deep sense of abiding peace. just to be there, sitting together with the people i love, sharing something so wonderful, was truly perfect. and the day could not have been more gloriously suited for baseball - it was truly one from the Book of Days. earmarked for us. and much loved.