My mother and I went to watch the Red Sox mop the floor with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays last night. With a victory of 15-4 it was pretty pathetic, even by Tampa Bay standards. I got the tickets as a gift for my mom's birthday, since she is a beyond ridiculous Red Sox fan.
My mom has been a baseball fan since the womb. My grandfather was fairly good pitcher in his day and was even offered a minor league contract with the Boston Braves after he got got out of the Army (he turned them down). Once the Braves left town, the entire city focused their attention on the Old Towne Team, thus ensuring that the New England Boomer generation could live a conflict-free childhood.
My mom watches every single game in its entirety, every single season. She stood by them when they managed to blow it season, after season, after season. She skipped high school to attend the 1967 World Series and would spend the majority of the weekends in her 20's getting a tan in the bleachers, even when they could barely draw a crowd of 7,000. She knows every player, every stat, and can give accurate rapid fire responses to every AFLAC trivia question.
Unfortunatley for Mama N my sisters and I did not pick up her rabid obsession with the sport. Sure, we like the Red Sox, but we're not, how shall I say it, fanatics about it. While my father would merely bore us with stories about Camp N Oil Truck (his father was an oilman, and he waxes nostagically about fixing oil burners at 3am in sub zero temperatures), my mom would bore us to tears with stories of the play-by-play for a particular game she attended in 1974.
Because she is honest to goodness the hardest person to shop for (and there is definitely a limit on how many Elizabeth Grady fascials you can buy your mother without her getting insulted), I somehow managed to line up the sun, the moon, the gods, and my Internet browser correctly to get her non-nosebleed tickets to last night's game. We stayed until the seventh inning stretch when the Sox had an 11 run lead and it started downpouring. Since we obviously wanted to see how badly we could beat the Rays, I introduced her to my best friend Eastern Standard for strawberry cobblers and big screen action. And you know what? We actually had a lot of fun. Despite the generation difference, there is nothing on earth that brings a mom and daughter together like $11 mixed drinks and the Boston Red Sox.
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3 comments:
I was at that same game. Where were you sitting?
Right field. You?
i was in rightfield grandstand, but after 2nd inning moved to 3rd base side loge. i think this was my 0th game this year. oy vey.
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