Baseball

If I'm honest, I have never liked baseball. I grew up in a household obsessed with it: my brother could correctly identify every player on the A's according to jersey number by the time he was two, and my mom would listen to games on the radio in the car, out in the garden, in the kitchen (she purchased a special radio exactly for this purpose)... When we had cable, we watched games on TV.

My dad enjoyed it, I suppose, and certainly went along willingly with our imposed household A's fan-dom, but Mom was the ringleader, and my brother her protégé. Occasionally Mom would drag me along for a game and I'd be forced to sit in the hot California sun eating Baked Lays chips on the bleachers, bored out of my mind. I didn't get it. Didn't like it. And certainly wasn't going to let on that despite all my protestations I was starting to understand the rules, because I Still. Didn't. Care. Thankfully she caught on that bringing me along was a bad idea, so the live games petered out.

So you can understand what a total triumph of the human experience it is that I have not only gone to a total of THREE baseball games since living in New York, but I have gone WILLINGLY and OF MY OWN IMPETUS. Truly a testament to... I don't know, something. Tonight was one such triumph.

With spring in the air, I (now, if you somehow learn how to time travel and go back to tell pre-adolescent Jessica this, she will be just SHOCKED) have been itching to go to a Yankees game. While researching, I discovered that the A's were in town for a few days, so I knew it was fate. I found two willing accomplices and we trekked to the Bronx to watch the boys do their thing. Now, obviously by "watch" I mean talk, notice the A's hit a homerun on the opening pitch, talk, eat garlic fries, talk, dance, sing "God Bless America", talk... But I'm telling you: between the garlic fries and all this fun stuff, I think I could really get into baseball.

Oh, and the A's won! Somewhere, my mother is very, very happy about this.