Nearly Normal

Nearly Normal

 

Clare and Chris came over for dinner last night, hamburgers on the grill.  For a wedding gift, my parents bought us an oak dining-room table that comes with two leaves.  We used both leaves to maintain proper social distancing.  The meal was our act of courage in the age of coronavirus.

 

Later, we watched a rebroadcast of game one of the 2005 ALDS, White Sox vs. Red Sox.  My daughter was ecstatic.  “They’re going to win by something like 16-1.”  She was off a bit; the final score was good Sox 14, bad Sox 2.  I forgot how much I hate Chris Berman as an announcer.

 

What I do remember was game three, on a Friday afternoon at Fenway.  It being the end of the week, we were at the batting cages straight from school; Clare was in eighth grade at the time.  (Let me note here that we regularly went on Fridays, and at some point came to the attention of Clare’s future high school coaches.  One of them told me he could hear her hitting several cages down and literally prayed that she would come to his school, which she did.)  That’s the kind of dad I was, not altering our routine even with our team in the playoffs.

 

Paul Konerko hit a go-ahead, two-run homerun around the time we finished and were headed back to the car; that would mean we listened on the way home as Orlando Hernandez, “El Duque,” wiggled out of a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam, twice going to a full count on Boston batters.  You could say these were good memories on two different levels.

Our visitors left a little after nine.  I can only hope they come again, and bring more baseball with them.