Why I care
By Karlsie
While watching the rain-shortened game the other night, one of the boys asked me a simple question: "Why do you care so much?"
It's a hard question to answer - why do I care so much? I'm not on the team, I don't make money if they win (or lose) and it's not as if I have any close friends or family members playing - so why do I care so much? In some ways, it's like asking, "Why is the sky blue?" I know it has to do with light refraction and various principles of physics and light and stuff - but it's all Greek to me.
So I gave him the simple answer: because I do.
But it is worth thinking about - why do I care so much? In order to answer it I have to take a couple of steps back in time. It goes deeper than the Zen concept of the back and forth duels with no clock and rhythms that ebb and flow. It goes deeper than spiritual metaphors that people often pull out of their hats.
It goes back to the bond between a sister and a brother. I tell the story of how my brother - the same one who began calling me Karlsie - put me in a box and said, "There's your box seat, now shut up and watch the game," got me started. And he did. But there was something about being able to watch the game with my brothers and dad on a summer afternoon that felt like… well, like belonging. Even though I was a girl in a time when girls didn't play baseball, weren't allowed in little league and were expected to grow up to be wives and mommies - baseball felt good and right. Even then, always aware of my gender, I didn't watch the way boys could justify - but I watched enough to be able to talk baseball and trade cards intelligently so I knew which players (other than the Yankees) to clip to my bike wheels and which ones to save.
It was the only sandlot game that, when choosing up sides, I was the first one picked instead of the last. When most girls dreamed of being ballerinas and nurses, I wanted to be a catcher for the Sox and hear Sherm Feller (of blessed memory) call my name over the loudspeaker at Fenway introducing me to the cheers of the crowd. It wasn't part of the growing feminism movement going around me. I didn't want to be the first woman to play for the Sox, I just wanted to play for the Sox. When I was 12 and my mother gave me a boy cut after gum got stuck in my hair, one of the kids on my street wanted me to sign up for his little league team as "Karl." I was scared my parents would catch me and there'd be hell to pay, it never occurred to me that every coach in town knew my parents and wouldn't be fooled by leaving the final "a" off my name in spite of my childish body and short hair.
Of course girls had softball, but I got tired of constantly saying, "It's not the same thing." I finally gave up after a while and kept my love of baseball quiet. When '75 rolled around, it was a new age. Women were going to college and climbing career ladders. Title IX was kicking into effect and it was a brave, new world. I no longer had to keep my love of baseball secret.
Through the rest of high school, in college and adult life, I could go to Fenway with my friends and watch the games with a couple of beers and yell at the TV and no one said "boo" to me. The little girl who was slightly ahead of her time finally found that place of belonging that I discovered on those weekend afternoons in the summer with my brothers and dad.
I never knew the gender of my babies until they were born. I figured it was an exercise in patience - after all, what's nine months when stacked against the rest of my life? So when people would ask, "What do want?" I would reply "a starting short stop for the Sox."
"So you want a boy."
"I didn't say that."
Yes, it confused people - but there were others who just smiled and understood at the pregnancy classes. For his first holidays, I bought my son his first baseball glove - a soft fabric mitt with a Velcro covered ball. My (then) husband shook his head and said, "I will not have you push this child into your dream." He was not a baseball fan and he wanted a jazz musician.
When I was pregnant with my second and people asked what I wanted, I replied, "The second part of the 6-4-3 double play combination."
The year both boys were on the Red Sox, their coach put the oldest as short and his brother on second so I could honestly see my boys start as part of the 6-4-3 combo for the Sox.
I never played ball with the kids in the backyard. I did keep on them about practicing when they took clarinet, violin and sax. It wasn't until my oldest boy's last year in Little League that I actually got involved as more than a team mom. I would hit fungos to the kids that showed up early so they could work on their fielding. One day my son asked why I hadn't practiced with him like that all along and that was one I could answer: "Because I wanted you to live your dreams, not mine."
On the day of game four of the World Series, the two youngest boys had a brotherly spat that went that hair too far and blood was drawn. I arrived in the waiting room of the local ER with the older of the two waiting to see if there was real damage there. My Pi-guy was snuggled up to me in the waiting room when the game started. He immediately stood up, took his hat off and placed it over his heart for the National Anthem and yelled, "Play Ball" at the end - much to the delight of the other patients and staff there. When the nurse called us back, she made sure to put us in a room with a TV so we could watch the game together while waiting for the harried doctors.
The doctor entered the room, turned off the TV and immediately my son and I let out a cry of protest. He looked and said, "It's just a baseball game, why do you care so much?"
"It's history," my son replied. "If they win tonight, it's history."
The doctor shook his head and examined my son. When he left to touch base with the specialist on call, we turned the game back on. The specialist came in, examined my son and they discussed the game during the examination. He asked my son who his favorite player was ("Duh, that's easy - Tek and Nixon!") and all those sorts of questions. He decided my son needed some antibiotics, but not stitches and looked at him and said, "Do you think you're well enough to go home?"
"I will be in about an hour."
The doctor looked up and saw what inning it was, smiled and said, "You can go home at the change of innings and listen in the car. You don't live that far away. When you grow up, what position do you want to play?"
"My mom wanted me to be a second baseman, but I want to be the catcher - it's the best job on the team."
I had never told my boys about how I wanted to be a catcher when I grew up - I don't even own a catcher's mitt in spite of having my last glove (Mickey Mantle signature Rawlings) from when I was his age. In that moment, the connection I felt with things came full circle. Here was my baby who had been through hell over the years with his kidney problems and all that went with it and he wanted to be a catcher. I almost started crying like the girl I am - but instead I just managed a smile and hugged him.
The boys get along like brothers. The oldest gave up on baseball a couple of years ago when he realized he played the game for fun but kids his age play for blood. He's entered the second phase of fandom, the "I don't care and it doesn't hurt as much" phase. He took up running and excels at it. I can't say I'm surprised as he was the kid who couldn't connect with the ball, but when he got on base, the other coaches worried because, if you blinked, he was on third and was never picked off when he stole. The middle one aged out of the system last year and is thinking about going out for the middle school team or playing lacrosse - he can't make up his mind. He still wants to go to Little League camp for 13-15 year olds next summer in Pennsylvania and maybe going back to Bristol as a counselor in a couple of years. His younger brother just played his last year of Little League but really wants to be a pitcher next year.
The other day I overheard the two of them talking. "Perhaps we can be a dynamic duo - you on the mound, me behind the plate - that really makes the other teams shake in their shoes."
"That would be pretty cool."
I often pull out the quote, "It was if something came and took me by the hand and said, 'I am baseball, come with me,'" to answer that why I care question. I have been known to say, "I can't help it, it's genetic." In the end, I realize that it is a deeper thing that spans across generations and wraps us in its arms.
I have never switched loyalties and the Sox are part of the reason I chose to stay and settle in Boston after college instead of moving to DC. They are as much a part of me as my eye and hair color. I care because they are the Sox and they are mine… win or lose.
So yes, if they lose it's a shame - but today, I'm hoping for the win.
