Take Me Out to the Royals Game

My love of baseball was cultivated in a time when baseball was the star of the game. I am so old that my first games were at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City which was torn down so long ago that a community garden now grows on the site. It was here I chose Lou Piniella as my favorite player and learned what the numbers 1 through 9 signified. It was here that I developed a passion for a summer day at the ballpark, warm and sticky, with 9 innings and a blank scorecard in front of me, in anxious anticipation for the 7th inning stretch. It was here I sat, between my father and grandfather, topped with a Royal Blue ball cap, Cracker Jack in hand, ideally happy for many a summer day.


Once again I am ideally happy. Once again the game of baseball is the star.


In the twenty nine years since the Royals last played in the post season I have grown too comfortable with the idea that the glory days of Kansas City baseball might have passed and that the Royals of my youth, George and Hal and Willie, might just be the only names to remember. My annual visit to Kaufman Stadium became more of an opportunity to share my childhood with my girls than one with any expectations for great baseball. Far too many stories began with "remember when Freddy Patek...?". (No one did.)

I've never been so deliriously happy to be completely wrong.

Playing the kind of baseball that is incredibly fun to watch, putting together runs like puzzle pieces, and behaving like genuinely good guys who are just as excited to be winning as their fans are, the Royals are headed to the World Series. This team that together only hit 95 home runs in the regular season has now swept two teams and won 8 straight post season games, putting together runs pitch by pitch. The team that has not one super salaried star but plays together like they've been doing it since 1985 (even though most of them were not yet born in 1985) is showing everyone what scrappy baseball looks like and why it works. The Royals are making baseball a team sport once again and we are enjoying every stolen base.
 

When the Royals moved from Municipal Stadium to Kaufman, we moved with them, summer days now spent in section 306, third base side.It was here that I announced to my Dad I was too old for the baseball cap he had dropped on my head, here that my grandfather saw his last game, and here that I watched, with my dad, Grandfather and sister, the Royals win Game 7 of the 1985 World Series. My view has changed; Royal blue cap on head I'll watch every game of the upcoming series with three new seatmates, not in section 306 but 500 miles away, remembering how great it is to be a Royals fan and loving every minute of this amazing year.

Derek Jeter: Twenty Years in the Same Outfit

In the late 1970's, when a good deal of my days were spent at the ball park with my dad or sitting on the back patio, listening to Denny Mathews' play by play on my grandfather's old transistor radio, when baseball was an integral part of summer and activities were planned around the Royals schedule, I knew that the players on the field on any given day were the same ones that were there the day before. The names: Brett, White, McRae, consistently causing my grandfather to scream in adoration, or frustration, through the crackle of the old radio broadcast. Those names, so familiar, were part of the comfort of baseball, the knowing that every day Bopaw would be there, in the shade on the back porch, listening to baseball while smoking a cigarette and musing on the condition of the garden.

In our paper plate loving society, does the disposable system of player rotation teach us all that we are easily replaced? And that allegiance and loyalty are nothing compared to the highest dollar? How do I raise Cubs fans when my children have no idea who is playing baseball on any given day?

My George Brett jersey was outdated when I outgrew it, not when George outgrew the Royals. And while I know it's easier to stick with a team like the Yankees, it's still nice to see someone in the same uniform for twenty years, in the age of disposable baseball. In one night Derek Jeter rose to the top of my daughters' list of favorite players, because right now they have no idea who is in the Cubs dugout. Neither do I. 

It's a business, says Jack, it's not that way anymore.
But I wish it was, I really do.

Happy Father's Day

Her father called her Dutch and she adored him. He was older and tall, the consummate father who returned at the end of the day to an orderly home, a loving wife, a son, and one precious daughter.

Dad called me Boo. Saturday mornings were the best part of the week: breakfast at Sydney's, haircuts and car washes, time spent in the uninterrupted adoration of my father who always gave in and sat at the counter.

Mary comes by it naturally, following her mother and great aunt in her all consuming love for her dad. She squeals "DAD" when he walks in a room and for a minute or two there is no one else in the world.

Happy Father's Day, that every little girl should be so lucky.

Image courtesy of Clive Reedman, Flickr

Smelling Boats and Beds

Jack opened the huge box and I stuck my head in for a peek, but rather than see bunk beds I smelled life jackets. Opening this box was like popping open the cargo space on the front of the boat, the one where we kept ropes and anchors, life preservers and assorted, and rarely used, flotation devices. Mine was multi colored where all the others were orange, and mine was worn all the time, my mother being terrified of water. Why she chose to spend every weekend bobbing around on a boat in a state of panic I still do not understand.


The musty boat smell was the same, and it lingers still, days after the new beds have been assembled and occupied by two very happy five year old sleepers. Opening the door to their room is like stepping onto the boat, the big yellow beast that was my summer home for years. The stretch from the dock was always a bit scary, just longer than my five year old legs could reach, but with a quick push from my dad I was on board, racing away to a weekend of wet lake fun.

Why these beds arrived full of musty boat smell is a mystery, but I'm happy they did. I've been away from that lake for a very long time, the old yellow boat sold years ago. Still, the smells take me back there from time to time: breakfast sausage and cinnamon rolls in a tube, circa 1974 Coppertone, Fritos, dead fish, lighter fluid, damp towels and always the cigar. Landmarks along the way let me know we were getting close, the market in Laurie meant we were minutes from the boat. Windy roads that now would leave me reeling were all that stretched between our car and water, the last 10 minutes by far the longest part of the four hour trip.

Buried somewhere in the family photo archives there is a picture of Mimi and me bobbing along in a huge blow up life boat, me in the multi colored life preserver and pink sunglasses and Mimi with a scarf around her head, cateye sunglasses and a cocktail in her hand dangling over the water. We were tied to a dock, I'm certain, serenaded by Johnny Cash, Simon and Garfunkel, and Neil Diamond. The same sounds that woke me every morning, my father singing "I Walk the Line" as he flipped the sausage patties on the tiny stove.

Our nautical years came to a screeching halt when my grandparents decided
they'd rather spend their summer on the golf course and Dad headed for the mountains; my mother was greatly relieved. Years later, after they divorced, my mother put her sailor suit back on when she married my stepfather, a wonderful man who would have been quite happy living full time at the lake. They built a wonderful cottage with a beautiful view and a deck that hung out over the water. The trip was the same, a different turn at the end to arrive just across from where we used to be, and the smell when you opened the door, much like opening the door to Mary and Kate's room, the intoxicating musty reminder of childhood, living now, for a short time, in my children's room.

May Day Birthday

Bopaw was born on May 1, 1901 and so, on Saturday, I reminded Mary and Kate that May Day was also their great grandfather's birthday.

Mary thought for a moment and then suggested we bake a cake. Creative, interesting way to get a cake, working the never actually met, 18 years deceased great grandfather angle.

"But mom, if I eat some cake then Bopaw can have some too, because he is in my heart".


Sweeter than cake, every day.

Suit No Tie

Minutes before I had been sound asleep, snuggled next to my grandmother while Bopaw snored loudly in the next bed. The piercing sound woke us all, startled us into sitting positions, and my grandfather, his few remaining hairs disheveled, looked around, mumbled something to my grandmother and went right back to sleep. Calmly she reached over, picked up the phone and dialed the front desk. That she understood him was a clear benefit of almost fifty years of marriage, not a full set of teeth between them, garbled noise was the chosen form of communication when awakened by a screeching horn in the middle of the night.

Patiently she waited while the phone rang, although to be clear, not a chance anyone could have understood a word she had to say had someone stayed behind to answer the phone in the middle of what I was certain was a raging fire. In my yellow and brown Pebbles Flintstone pajamas I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway finding a full floor of guests as without teeth and hair as we were, all in various stages of pajama clad confusion. "It's a fire! Get up! Bopaw get up NOW!", my eight year old self near hysteria, jumping like mad at the foot of his bed. He rolled over, raised his eyebrows and thought about throwing me out the window, to facilitate my escape from the burning building.

Preparing me for this dramatic event in my young life, third grade Anxiety Training. In Mrs. Coit's room, where we were subjected to 30 minutes of intimidation and manipulative terror masquerading as education, it was fire safety week. Fire fighters visited our school, pamphlets were distributed and the responsibility to get the family out of the burning building now assigned solely to the eight year old family member. We were to map our exit routes, draw up a plan and run family fire drills weekly. My father had no interest in this, not once did we practice our escape, no emergency fire ladders were purchased. The Fire Film Scare Series culminated in a horror film staring the family who had no plan, the final shot of the dog, the only survivor, on the front lawn, an errant tear in his eye, as his entire family perished in the blazing inferno behind him. I had trouble sleeping.

"Get up now, please!", and shocking, still no answer at the front desk. Bopaw got up, put on his robe and slippers, and stepped into the bathroom to run a comb through his hairs. He then checked the hallway, muttered something and went in to put in his teeth, "well Mother, she's right, everyone does appear to be leaving. Maybe we should head downstairs". At this point I had gathered Theodore and Baby Kelly, my two always travel companions, and was standing, jumping, at the front door, waving my goodbyes to all the survivors en route to a lower floor. Mimi was up, and working furiously to ready herself, while doing her best to calm the now panicked eight year old, still in the Pebbles pajamas.

My dear grandfather went to the closet and selected a suit, a full on gray wool suit to slip into for his descent into the blazing inferno that I knew would find us on the way down. This he wore over his blue, with navy piping, pajamas, monogrammed on the pocket. Once assembled he realized that slippers would never do and so, while Mimi and I stood waiting, he put on socks and shoes before announcing that yes, now he was ready. We stepped into the hallway, the only ones left, and Bopaw walked to the elevator. "Oh no, no no no, we have to walk down, we have to take the stairs in a fire!", their combined 115 year old bodies not at all pleased with this announcement, they followed me to the exit door. In what was surely the longest time ever spent in a stairwell, we descended 10 stories to the street outside the Kahler Hotel, pausing at every landing for air. At these breaks I would run ahead, and then back, utilizing all my fire preparedness training: checking doors for heat, staying low and breathing into the damp washcloth I had somehow found time to prepare. They begged me to go on, to save myself and I cried out, "NO! Never, I'll never leave without you", or maybe they were discussing last week's golf game, Mimi having left her teeth to broil in our upstairs room.

A short hour or so later we reached the ground floor. Throwing open the door, having saved my grandparents, Theodore and Baby Kelly from certain death, I stepped confidently into the lobby, knowing that my well developed fire safety skills were the real heroes. There was not a firefighter to be seen, only far in the distance could we see the front desk clerk, shouting "hello" impatiently into the phone. "Mother, did you leave the phone off the hook?".

We took the elevator back up to the tenth floor, false alarm.

The Gate

There were two girls on the other side of the gate who appeared to be about my age. We stood and looked at each other for a few minutes, smiling and waving. My grandmother appeared behind me and suggested that I come back inside, it was time for dinner. Not at all hungry, I wanted to go out and play with these girls. She waved them on but I held firm, I wanted to be on the other side. At five my Spanish was limited to hello, thank you, please, and a few food items. I tried them all, certainly saying something as interesting as "me gusta el taco", the girls giggled, and said something back, which, having no idea what they were saying, made me giggle. Soon enough all three of us were laughing; Mimi went to find the cook.

My grandparents left sometime in mid January. Knowing I wouldn't see them for weeks, I spent the night before they left at their house, helping pack and leaving little notes in their luggage, the black and white patterned Samsonite with the bright orange lining. A week earlier my grandfather had brought them down from the attic so that, even though she took the exact same clothes each year, Mimi could start the packing and organizing required for a month away from home.

Three weeks later Dad and I went to the grocery store for milk, eggs, bacon, bread and these truly sweet sticky buns my grandfather liked, stocking the refrigerator for their return. The next morning we were on a plane, to be greeted in sunshine by my grandfather, relaxed and tan, driving the old orange Volkswagen thing that I thought was the most exciting car ever made. Dad took over and drove us home, Bopaw in the front seat smoking a cigarette and filling us in on what had happened in the year that we had been away. Mom and I rode in the back, my hair flying, her screams muffled by the roar of the open air car as it raced along the malecon.

Mona was still alive, and still horribly unpleasant. She patrolled the beautiful jardin, never beyond the fence for fear that she would bite someone. Only Paulino went in, to feed her, and take care of the flowers. The roosters next door had not made it to a stockpot yet and were still the very early morning wake up call for the entire block. Julia was making pork roast tonight, in honor of Dad's arrival, and papas fritas for me. The Testerman's were coming tomorrow for dinner, Mimi was having a party for their Kansas City friends on Saturday.

We bounced along the cobblestones and up the steep hills in town, Mom alternating between screeching in terror and joy as we passed her favorite shops: cute pink sandals outside Letty's competing for attention with a burro who wandered into our path. When we rounded the corner and stopped at the end of the road I could smell the papas fritas; Mimi's face inside the gate settled it, I was home, at least for a short time.

One week to sleep in the mosquito netting, to bury myself in the sand at El Dorado, to drink fresh squeezed orange juice every morning and to beg my Dad to carry me back up the hill after a post dinner trip down to Bing's for pineapple ice cream. One week to spend with the four people I loved the most in the world, in the place I waited all year to be, Mexico.

And then, at the end, as I knew would happen each year, I said goodbye to my parents and got on a plane with my grandparents for the trip home. Mom and Dad just at the start of their Mexican time, a month of friends and parties and sunburns in front of them, while I was headed to snow and school and heartache, leaving my parents never easy, and my leaving was never easy for Dad. Waking the next morning to the sticky rolls we bought just a week earlier made him closer, even though I knew he was very far away.

Julia came to the gate, talked to the girls for a minute and then turned to Mimi and me. In the end she allowed me outside, but only for a few minutes, long enough to take a picture and let me run to the end of the street and back. At five I had not yet learned that I wasn't supposed to be friends with the people who stood on the other side of the gate.