Adieu, Mon Season, Adieu!

Well, despite the rain, despite the mud, despite a two-day delay, Philadelphia won the 2008 World Series. The puppy dog pile was intense with outfielders, right on cue, jumping on top of infielders who had jumped on top of the hugging pitcher and catcher. The Tampa Bay Rays looked on, dejected and sad and dreading the long plane ride home. And The Boyfriend and I, having already said good bye to our favorite teams in the regular season (me) and the post season (him), had one last good-bye to the Crossroads Lounge in Anchorage, (where friends meet) where to the bar’s credit they had the World Series on every tv monitor in the joint. But now the season turns to basketball, and football, and hockey and Sunday morning football games with a steak and egg special between 9 and 2 p.m. (We are of course 4 hours behind Eastern Standard Time so Alaskans are used to watching football in their jammies and with mugs of coffee in hand.) We’ll be back in April.

In so many ways, I’m ready for the season to be over. I’ll take a break, and focus on Christmas, and then on to the Mardi Gras season (check out http://www.killerrubboard.com/! ) and enjoy the beauty that an Alaskan winter has to offer. There’s an old wise-cracking saying from a button I used to wear during my sassier days that proclaims, “How can I miss you if you don’t go away?” So we have to have time to detach and forget and build up hope and excitement and build up our fighting weight again so we are fierce competitors and not the sentimental marshmallow I always turn into this time of year.

A couple last thoughts from The Girlfriend at the end of this baseball season, random thoughts, like a ball breaking loose into a ground ball and darting into the part of the outfield that no fielder covers.

First of all, baseball caps with ear flaps. Who knew? This is the first year that I’ve seen ear flaps on baseball hats, and they featured prominently in the Tampa Bay lineup during the blowing rain and 39 degree temperature of Monday’s game. You know, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Alaska hunters have been wearing hunting caps with ear flaps for years , but the baseball cap version is truly styling. I predict they are here to stay. You know those commercials featuring Joe Torre in Los Angeles and touting some kind of financial planning (the red dot people)? He is featured surfing and doing yoga and driving in a convertible. I can feel his blood thinning out even as he speaks. If he ever returns to a team in the North, he’ll be looking like Joe Maddon did last night. I think the Alaska Glacier Pilots team have already put in an order with Tampa’s team for next season. Can we get them in camouflage?

Secondly, groundskeepers rock! I’ve always been impressed by the guys with the lawnmowers who made intricate designs such as checkerboards, and stripes, and the funky Boston Red Sox logo in the infield. They carefully cultivate those patterns through a rich fertilizing program and mowers with specialty blades that bend the grass this way and that. The new ballparks are modern day temples in many ways, and the groundkeepers are the unsung heroes of grass and lushness. But in this World Series, it became obvious that different fields demand different care. The Tampa Bay Rays play in Tropicana Field, a domed stadium, and their grass looked meager and adequate, but no Field of Dreams. Philadelphia, with that beautiful new ball park, has a gorgeous field and you could tell that the temple keepers were a fine skilled bunch. But Game Five on Monday night was a groundskeeper’s nightmare. With rain pounding down for most of the game, the baserunning paths turned to a creek of soupy mud. Despite the groundskeeper’s diligent dumping of sawdust, the special “Groundskeeper Secret Sauce for Rainy Days,” and the judicial unrolling of a tarp bigger than the Matanuska Susitna Borough which holds the distinguished city of Wasilla, The baserunning and stealing game looked like those advertisements for “Slip and Slides.” They couldn’t stop the rain, but they kept the game going until the sixth inning. Last, night, the field looked beautiful. Gardeners’ rule!

And lastly, I think about why I started writing this blog in the first place. My goal was to help Girlfriends of the world understand and appreciate this game called baseball. I remember back to when I didn’t know what I didn’t know and when I didn’t understand baseball enough to even recognize my mistakes and faux pas. Those of us who weren’t baseball fans as children all took our first step somewhere. Somewhere along the line, we have an experience that changes it for us. We end up spending lots of time sitting next to someone on a couch whose passion is baseball. Or we become friends with his baseball buddy who knows more about baseball than most people on the planet. Or we meet a friend of a friend who pitches for a softball team and rabidly defends her team even through heartbreak and gossip about Madonna. Or your sister moves to a new town and is suddenly wearing red tee shirts and spouting off the latest batting stats for David Ortiz. Something invites you into this club of people who love baseball. If you are willing to learn, you are amazed how complex, and involved, and statistical, and fanatic, and heartbreaking, and quirky, and truly wonderful this game is.

I had to remember all this last night in the bar when a young woman came up to us in the bar last night to say hi to The Boyfriend who she knew through the music scene. She stopped, introduced herself, and started chatting, making small talk and being very friendly. What she didn’t know is that above her head was a tv set showing that it was the top of the 9th with Tampa up to bat, down 4 to 3 with two outs and two strikes. And the Phillies posed to win the World Series with the next out. She didn’t have a clue what was happening at that moment. I (and The Boyfriend) were smiling and nodding, but with our ears and our peripheral vision were watching the end of the Series happening before our very eyes. She left before the final out (whew!) with a friendly goodbye.

I realize she was a girlfriend waiting to happen. If I see her again, I need to take her aside and introduce her gently to the art of baseball. I’ll loan her my DVD copy of Bull Durham and invite her to join us at the Crossroads Lounge next April, when the baseball season will begin again and the Seattle Mariners will commence on their march to their first appearance ever in the World Series. Now that, girlfriend, is what I’m talking about. There is always next year.

See you at the game!

--The Girlfriend