It wasn’t your normal group.
We had four tickets to the Astros game the other night. It started out that my husband was going with my 13-year-old son and two of his friends. Now, that would be one of your “normal” baseball groups.
Another normal group would be a dad with his family, trying desperately to watch the game while little Suzy climbs on and off his lap, eating cotton candy.
Then you’ll see four college guys, caps on backwards, whooping it up every time anything happens, trying to get on television. You might see two businessmen, or guys with dates, or coaches with little league teams.
What you don’t see is groups with no men. That’s abnormal.
Well, one of my son’s friends couldn’t come, so I was included in our group. I like baseball, so that was great with me. Then, at the last minute, my husband couldn’t go because of a meeting he couldn’t get out of. So my 20-year-old daughter joined us.
The differences between having my husband and daughter with me at a baseball game were humorous and abundant.
When guys drive to the game, they park in the $5 lot five miles away. We girls got within a block of the stadium. You see, it was about a hundred degrees outside, so that means the stadium was going to have its roof closed. That means the air conditioning was going to be going full blast, and that means we were going to get cold.
I always get cold. If I dress for summer and we go to a restaurant, I get cold. I carry a jacket to the movies with me. Girls think about that stuff, and we dress for it. So anyway, what I mean is, we had on long pants, and weren’t about to walk across Houston in the hundred-degree heat and get all sweaty and stuff. A close parking space was worth whatever it cost.
Besides, when a coke costs $3.25, peanuts are $3.75, and cotton candy is $4.00, the cost of a prime spot is small, comparatively speaking. I went to the concession stand and got two hot dogs and two cokes, and it was $20. Girls can rationalize these things.
The Astros scored in the 6th inning to pull into the lead. My husband would have said something like, “Now you’re talkin’ boys!” My daughter asked, “What’s the score?” I told her it was 4 to 2, and she asked how I knew that. She had been sitting there for 6 innings and didn’t know where the scoreboard was.
My husband would have commented on the batting averages of each player as he got up to bat. My daughter and I had a running commentary on their unusual stances. And physiques, of course.
When the closing pitcher came in and they flashed his picture on the big screen, my husband would have commented on his wonderful statistics. My daughter said, “Hmmmm … nice.” And she wasn’t talking about his statistics.
My husband’s eyes would be locked on the field for most of the game. My daughter and I constantly scanned the crowd for useful female information, things like, “That’s a cute haircut”, “She shouldn’t wear that blouse with those pants”, “He looks like John Travolta”, and “He’s C-U-T-E!”
She saw one such c-u-t-e guy who had a Texas A&M cap on, and since she also goes there, her eyes sort of lit up. She spent two innings trying to make eye contact.
We played all the silly games they flash up on the big screen during breaks, sang “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch, and screamed wildly when the mascot was throwing free stuff into the crowds. (This free stuff, of course, isn’t really worth the effort.)
We had a great time. Didn’t get a lot of baseball watched, but it was a blast.
