Take Me Out to the Ballgame!
Ignoring the kind of luck it takes to catch only their second loss in 10 games, today’s Mets game was a blast as Isaac and I — along with evil Dan, Yankee fan and official bad luck charm! — enjoyed some great weather out at Shea Stadium, decked out in sorta-matching Mets gear.
While it wasn’t his first baseball game, it’s probably the first one he’ll really remember, and it was definitely the first time he asked questions about how to play. He wasn’t even one yet when we went to the first post-9/11 game, sleeping through Piazza’s home run and the uproar that followed it; and we went to a couple of games down in Virginia to see the Norfolk Tides play, the summer before he turned two years old, but that’s the minor leagues, and other than India’s birth, 2002 has pretty much been scratched from our mental hard drives.
Major League Baseball was celebrating Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the day Robinson crossed the foul line onto the playing field as the first African-American “professional” baseball player. (Yeah, because the only reason the Negro Leagues weren’t “professional” is because a bunch of white guys said/say so.) Robinson’s widow, Rachel, was there; the Christ Tabernacle Youth Gospel Choir performed, including an excellent a capella rendition of the national anthem, a song that always gets to even my cynical ass; and Adriana Lee, a Jackie Robinson Foundation scholar from Rutgers University, who threw out the first pitch to Carlos Delgado.
I had no idea when I bought the tickets on the spur of the moment yesterday, having been inspired by the weather forecast and the realization that, if Isaac’s going to be buying us a nice house in 20 years off of his fat baseball contract, I need to get him into the sport ASAP. Even though he hates watching it on TV — like his mother — he had a pleasant enough time at the game, bored here and there as even I get sometimes, but when I put him to bed a few minutes ago, he said he had fun and wanted to go again. Fortunately, he does like to actually play — at one point during the game, he asked he if could go down on the field and play — so as soon as we get ourselves re-settled again, I want to get him into Little League.
Speaking of re-settled, just when we thought we were staying put for another couple of years, it looks like we’ll be moving this summer after all. Since we want to stay in the City for as long as India needs/qualifies for the school she’s currently in, and our long-standing day care is disappearing as of June 2nd, we decided to look into taking the plunge and moving into Manhattan and a better school system. Surprisingly, Inwood is still relatively affordable — assuming you can handle the initial $$$hit of getting past the brokers and/or supers who act as gatekeepers to the neighborhood — and we just may have found our dream apartment yesterday, pending credit and income approval.
Dream. Apartment.
Hopefully more news on that late next week.
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good luck on the new place. i’m crossin mah fingers for you guys.
also, some good history regarding the smashing of the “color barrier”
Latino players have been in the majors since 1902, a full 45 years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. At least 45 Latinos, mostly Cubans, played big league ball between 1902 and 1947, the year of Robinson’s historic breakthrough. Some, like Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans–signed by the Cincinnati Reds in 1911–were forced to sign pieces of paper stating that they were of European and not African descent.
more here
“…if Isaac’s going to be buying us a nice house in 20 years off of his fat baseball contract…”
Funny thing, my wife and I have had a very similar conversation about both of our sons. BTW, kid #4 is coming this Friday via c-section.
anonymous = Earl