Baseball

When I was a senior in high school I got dumped four months before graduation so I looked for something to do on Saturdays. I bowled in the morning, then spent the rest of the day at ASU watching track and baseball. The players were handsome and they were good that year. Daddy loved that I embraced baseball even if it was for a reason I chose not to tell my dad. It was cheap and easy. And they won the College World Series. We even went to the airport to watch them arrive from Omaha. The next year I had a season ticket with some friends and learned to keep score in one of the those scorebooks you buy.

For the next Twenty years I followed the team. In 1994 when the coach was dying of cancer, I never dreamed as I sat there with my dad watching the Sun Devils play, would Coach Brock outlive him by one month, because we didn't know leukemia was destroying his immune system. He died on May 13th, and I went to the ASU game that night. I didn't have anywhere else to go, but where we would have been that night. I was on the treadmill at the "Q" when I heard ASU win the regional and they were headed to the College World Series again. Brock went with them, but he wouldn't last the week. I cried. I remember Oprah was on the bank of television while I listened to the radio and I hope no one thought I was crying because of what was going on on the television. ASU only lasted two games, and Brock died the day after the series was over. I don't remember who won, and I didn't go to the memorial service because I couldn't go to another funeral.

I got to go to the College World Series in June 1998. I was named ASU Fan of the Year that year too. I had wanted to go to the CWS since 1977 and there I was. I saw two games that week. USC beat LSU and then USC beat ASU. But I can say I was there. I saw a college champion crowned. I wished my dad was there too. I think maybe he was for a while.

I gave up baseball after that. I'd done what I wanted as an ASU fan and even politics can spoil college sports if you get too close to the inner circle. And I had other things to do with my life. But now I'm sitting here watching the MLB All Star game and writing this blog. I think of all my baseball memories, and remember all the good people I met...hell, I even met Pat Tillman at Stanford because his brother played on our team and he sat next to us at one of the games. I miss him, but I won't go into that...

I've had my at bat in the ninth, hit a home run and retired to the bench.