Girls and Baseball

Twice in one day I had the pleasure of hanging out with fellow females who love baseball!

We are a rare breed -- truly, most moms my age complain that baseball is slow and boring and rarely played in the sunshine as it should be. It's difficult to keep the siblings occupied with the game and increasingly difficult to follow ("What inning are we in?") The kids need to be there extra early to hit whiffle balls turning the entire evening into one long game in wet grass with hungry kids and seeing your player maybe touch the ball twice. There is always some fan/grandfather who knows more than both coaches and umpires put together -- and shares that knowledge all game.

Having grown up in Portland, Oregon, with no professional baseball team, but being an avid softball player, I was open to attending a few AAA games downtown and that was it. When I attended college near San Francisco, my ears provided my first exposure to Major League Baseball.

Since my classmates were overwhelmingly from the greater Bay Area, they had grown up with MLB, gone to games routinely and followed baseball in the newspaper. They followed their teams, rival players and schedules. They knew when the A's or Giants "were in town." They knew, by heart, the flagship radio stations of both teams. Many outdoor barbeques and pick up basketball games and "parties" were serenaded with "the game" on in the background.

And thanks to them (I didn't have a car at college) and sometimes BART, I attended many games on both sides of the bay and became an A's fan because it was closer, sunnier, flashier, and did I say sunnier?

That all changed when I met my husband, who was born and raised in San Francisco, rode the L Taraval to Candlestick Park, attended every "The Giants present Japanese-American Day" and had a mother who kept book during the games and attended every "The Giants present Senior Citizen Day." He entertains our son with tales of sneaking down to the good seats with Marty and when his car was driving alongside Willie Mays' on the 280 between San Mateo and the City. So now, by marriage, I am a Giants fan. And since our son was born there, he is also a "415 guy" as he says (415 is the area code for San Francisco).

So, fast forward to 2002 when I am attending a college class reunion and reconnect with one of those Bay Area Kids Who Love The Giants who now lives in Tigard! What a wierd coincidence -- we live in Rock Creek -- let's get together! Also, she is a girl. She is the kind of girl who loves the Giants so much, she attends all three games of a homestand when she is in the Bay Area. Her sister-in-law works for the Giants and her husband works for Nike and gets to go to All-Star games and stuff (lucky!). Well, we met them at Chevy's on Friday and they presented our son with the latest Nike baseball shirt (you can see it on Daiseke tonight) and as a bonus, a Nike/SF Giants shirt.

Jack pawed those shirts all night. We made him try it on and her husband did a product demo of all the baseball-related features of this new shirt. Very cool way to spend the evening -- talking mostly baseball and some other topics, but really, mostly baseball.

Oh, and earlier in the evening, I enjoyed Happy Hour with a colleague who loves baseball, too. Mostly she loves baseball players ("A Rod is on My List") so that counts.

Remember, it is moms who can also instill a love for the game of baseball!