Sara Sue & Baseball

Since baseball is my favorite sport, as well as Elisa's favorite sport, we have tried to teach Sara Sue a little bit here and there. We'll take her to games and watch it on TV. I've written here previously about how it was important to me to take her to a game at Yankee Stadium before it closes at the end of this year. In her young life she has already been to at least 10-12 games at various venues: Yankee Stadium, Camden Yards (Baltimore), RFK Stadium (Washington DC), Dodger Stadium and Eddy D. Field Stadium (Pepperdine). So, two things happened over the weekend that I consider significant.

First, on Saturday I was watching the Yankees-Red Sox game, and Sara Sue was standing in the kitchen doorway watching the game and having a snack. All of a sudden she quite innocently blurted out, "I like the Red Sox."

No words can adequately express the horror and utter nausea that swept over me even while the words were still hanging in the air. One hand went to my gut, and the other went to my forehead. I doubled over in pain (I am NOT making this up), psychosomatic though it may have been. Immediately I got up out of my chair chanting, "No, no, no, no, no, baby, no, no, no, no...." (Now that I type it out, it reminds me of my honeymoon... bah dah BING! Thank you, I'll be here all week, try the veal.) I went over to her and did my best to explain that what she was saying was essentially heresy and that indeed we DON'T like the Red Sox, although we don't want to see them get hurt, yadda yadda yadda, and that we really like the Yankees and the Dodgers and those are the best teams to like. I even had her repeat it twice: "We like the Yankees, not the Red Sox." I can only hope it sunk in.

Poor kid, she has a maniac for a father.

The other thing that happened last weekend was during the seventh inning stretch of the Dodgers game we attended with her cousin Lucy and uncle Tom. Of course we stood up to sing, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," and lo and behold I looked down at her about halfway through the song and she was just singing right along. I knew she had heard the song before, but I had no idea she knew the words (or at least most of them). I was nearly euphoric. That evening as I was giving her a bath we sang it together again.

She might have a maniac for a father, but he's a proud maniac. And that Red Sox thing? For some things it's best if you just pretend they never happened.