Baseball at Home

It’s summer, I’m thirteen. The sliding glass door is open and the smell of freshly cut grass drifts in from the backyard. The drone of our neighbor’s lawn mower blends with the hum of the fan into a soothing white noise. The lights in the house are off and in the cool darkness I’m burrowed into the couch cushions watching the Red Sox play the Mariners. Pedro Martinez is on the mound, giving another of his ten plus strikeout performances. My dad is sunk into the chair next to me, explaining one or another aspect of the game, or arguing with the announcers. Repeat this scenario across many summer days over many years.

Go back even further; I’m sitting on the floor at my grandparents’ house watching a TV that has a dial for changing channels. My grandpa is behind me in one rocking chair, my dad in the other. Their baseball related chatter drifts comfortably above me; I sit cross-legged, eating toast cut into small squares, lost in the game.

Skip ahead ten years. It’s game four of the World Series. Again I am sitting on the ground in front of our TV, the magnetism of the history about to take place having drawn me down from the couch. My dad is somewhere behind, the tension causing him to pace in and out of the room. Foulke fields a grounder hit to the mound and tosses it to first and in that moment we are overcome with total joy. 86 years of drought. A father and son watching their team win the Series for the first time in their lives.

Baseball will always be something I shared with my dad, and his dad. It will always be late nights, one more inning, checking scores in the morning paper, summer afternoons, watching from behind Pesky’s Pole. It’s pacing, anticipation, let-downs, miraculous highs. It’s a shared experience, a safe and comfortable repetition, a stubborn belief, a bonding dedication. 

Surrounded on all sides by soccer football,  cricket and rugby, Mark Adams still manages to keep tabs on the Sox's excellent start to the season from Zambia.