2 Short Of A Baseball Team
Mom would wear her Bluejays' sweatsuit and she was glued to the television, there was no talking. Baseball was sacred.
Mom would wear her Bluejays' sweatsuit and she was glued to the television, there was no talking. Baseball was sacred.
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SubscribeMarch might be the beginning of Major League Baseball on the mainland, but in Corner Brook the sporty types are still skiing — or, at the very least, doing a slush cup.
Mom had 7 kids — 2 short of a baseball team. She wasn’t the sort of parent that pushed her kids into doing anything in particular, she believed we had to grow into ourselves, not grow into someone else’s dreams for us. She did engage in a little subliminal messaging though, dressing us all in baseball caps and baseball jackets. I just liked cool clothes — and baseball jackets are cool. Unfortunately for mom, none of her kids were into baseball, we weren’t even into team sports. Outdoorsy, yes, but in that biking, hiking, swimming, camping kinda way. No, mom had given birth to a predominantly nerdy bunch of nearsighted bookworms, not jocks.
The Bluejays were mom’s team. She’d put on her Bluejays' sweatsuit and she was glued to the television...and there was no talking. You gotta understand, this was a woman who would chat through almost any movie or tv show — but not baseball, it was sacred.
Being in hospital with cancer did not stop mom from watching the Bluejays play.
“I used to beat the boys”, she told tell the nurse about her childhood baseball games, “they didn’t like it when I did that, sore losers.” Mom was fast, she could outrun a lot of people. I could never beat her…or even catch up.
When I brought her home from the hospital she couldn’t do much, she was mostly bedridden. Entertainment was a vital distraction, to provide a little emotional relief from the gravity of the situation. A League of Their Own was one of mom’s favourite movies. When I was caring for her in my home, I introduced her to the newer TV series based on the same story. Again, she was glued to the screen and there was no talking; sshhhh, baseball’s on!