Games on the Fourth of July

 Baseball is all about tradition and memory.  According to the former, teams in first place on the Fourth can expect to play in October.  My team, the White Sox, are deep in the cellar, so memories it is.

The first ballgame Clare ever went to was on July 4, 1994, for the Kane County Cougars of the A-level Midwest League; we took my parents, who were both 81 at the time.  I would have preferred going to Comiskey Park, but it was three years gone by then.  The most memorable part of the day was the first-ever blimp Clare saw on the way.  “Daddy, I have blimp ears,” my daughter would say after that whenever she heard a blimp.

Clare twice made the All-Star team at the Mustang level in Pony Ball, played, appropriately, on the Fourth.  It was hard to say who was prouder, father or child.  Clare was the only one who needed a little privacy to change into her All-Star tee-shirt, which I should have seen as an omen.  But I ignored that for the hit she got in her first All-Star at-bat.

Two years later, on another Independence Day, Clare insisted on taking part in the homerun hitting contest held before the Bronco level All-Star game.  By then, the more talented boys were doing travel as well as Pony.  They were the likely competition that Fourth, but Clare didn’t care.  Unlike the night before in her final regular-season game, she didn’t put any balls over the fence, she just kept one-hopping it, good enough for fifth place out of twenty-five.  There had to be twenty very disappointed boys that afternoon.

           Like Greg Maddux said, chicks dig the long ball.