Our Point of View

"Nice Catch, Darling"

How I Learned to Love My Wife and Baseball at the Same Time
by Joel T. Keys

The first time I took my wife to a baseball game, we arrived at then-D.C. Stadium to watch the Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians take batting practice.

Ours was the third car in the parking lot. It was noon. There was a doubleheader scheduled. I was excited. My wife was curious. Her curiosity began to wane about the fourth inning of the first game. Despite entertainment between games (some gents were using surf rods to cast rubber balls over the outfield fences), she demanded we leave during the fifth inning of the second game. We did.

Even to this day she gently reminds me of her ordeal. (By the way, the Senators took both games of the doubleheader, beating Sudden Sam McDowell in the first game.)

I admit that this was a bad way for her to break into watching professional baseball. You might think that the circumstance resulted in short periods of separation while I sat in a stadium and she went elsewhere. We've tried that. In Anaheim it wasn't the same without her.

In Philadelphia the men in our group sat in wicked line drive country while the ladies sat under the upper deck (Hurricane Bob delayed the game with the Braves three times, and the men got soaked). But it's just more fun when I'm with her.

All marriages go through some adjustments. Ours took place gradually, over a period of now nearly twenty years.

Slowly I have wised up. It has not been easy. And I share with you several rules that have kept my marriage together without sacrificing my presence at the ball park:

• I have found that it is cheaper to take my wife to the ball park than to send her off shopping. Once I let her drop me off at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore while she went to the art museum. She couldn't spend too much money in an art museum, I thought. After the game I found that she had earned a seventeen-dollar traffic ticket. I take her with me. It's cheaper.
• I don't use any catchy baseball phrases ("frozen rope", "can of corn", or even "southpaw") because she will wear them out and misuse them, e.g., "That sure looked like a frozen rope, didn't it?" or "There are lots of cans of corn tonight, aren't there dear?" or "That batter hits southpaw but throws northpaw."
• I taught her to find the concession. Now I don't have to go myself. Yes, she may run up quite a bill, but remember that it's cheaper than having her go shopping.
• I bought her a stadium seat. She wanted to sit where there are backs on the seats, which in Lynchburg means either paying more money for a reserved seat or sitting under the stadium roof. She doesn't like the reserved seats because of foul balls (she has no sense of adventure), and I don't like sitting under the roof because there are fewer foul balls.
• I had to become willing to backpack for her. She needs a Walkman with tapes, needlepoint, knitting, sketchbook, blanket, jacket, sunglasses, hat, suntan lotion, last Sunday's newspaper, raincoat, and her favorite novel (I try to talk her into To Kill a Mockingbird or The Old Man and the Sea because they are so much lighter than War and Peace or Ulysses ).
• I let her take a friend. Sometimes the two of them can notice things I would have missed. "That guy sure has funny socks." "The left fielder twitches every time his pitcher throws." "The tire ad in right field needs painting." "That batter crosses himself like a Roman Catholic, but his name sounds Jewish."
• I am preparing myself emotionally for the day when a foul ball again eludes my grasp (I have sat through years of reaching over t-shirted, beer swilling fans, trying to grab one wayward pop fly before I depart this earth), and she looks up surprised and catches it in her gentle hands. I practice for that moment. I am rehearsing the following phrase to be uttered with absolute nonchalance as though it were an everyday happenstance: "Nice catch, darling."