When baseball isn’t baseball

After Dave Niehaus, beloved Mariners announcer, passed away a few months ago, the news was flooded with pictures and calls from the great season of ’95 when the Mariners went to the playoffs for the first time.  Most well known, perhaps, is the game when Junior scored from first on a triple, winning the division title.  We were watching this clip with our sons, when Kyle (age 19), made the comment, “I never understood what was so special about that game – it was just a playoff win.”

I almost choked with frustration and disbelief at that comment.  “Only a game!!!” – how anyone could have that idea was so far beyond me that I couldn’t believe someone could even utter the sentence.  But then as I thought about it, I realized that perhaps, to some (OK, to most even), it really was only a game – just not to me.

Before ’95, I had never watched baseball, or sports of any kind.  Professional sports seemed silly and juvenile, and I certainly didn’t have the time or energy to be bothered.  But then that fall, the Mariners started winning unexpectedly, and I was caught up in Mariners Fever along with everyone else.  My beloved Grandma had always been a fan, and I started to call her after each great play, and we spent many games on the phone together.  As the season crescendoed that year, she and I would get so carried away we would be whooping with joy over the phone lines; when the season ended, we cried together.

That magic season ended, but the language of baseball had been forever opened between my Grandma and me.  Each year when Spring training began, we would start up our speculations; my blind, 85 year old Grandma would fly down to Spring Training each year and call me to tell me what she thought of our chances as she watched “Her boys of summer”.

As the years went on, Alzheimers began to take its hold on this wonderful woman, who was my rock and my anchor.  As she began to slip away, baseball always stayed with her.  She and I could listen to Mariners play, and even if all else was failing her, she could always follow the game, and she and I would talk during and/or after each one.  As the years and the disease took their toll, she got confused with the games, and thought we were back in that ‘95 season again; sometimes we would just talk through that ’95 lineup:  Vinnie Coleman, Joey Cora, Junior, Edgar . . . over and over again.

Eventually we had to move her into a home for the memory impaired, where she had a 2 foot high wall-cling of Edgar Martinez on the wall of the hallway entering her room.  She would touch this picture of him each time she entered and left her room, and often she had the happy delusion that Edgar would come visit with her in the afternoons.  One day, Edgar was stolen, and my Grandma would not go into her room; for the first time since Alzheimers took root, she was unable to reason, and simply did not believe that her room was her room, and she panicked and got so disoriented and confused.  It was terrifying for me to see her so distraught.

I called the Mariners Team Store in Bellevue Square, and asked desperately if they had another.  The poor kid who answered the phone tried to explain to me that Edgar had retired many years ago, and of course they didn’t carry such things any longer.  I was sobbing, telling him I needed it, and why.  He took my name and number, just to get me off the phone I was sure.  But 20 minutes later my phone rang; it was a manager at Safeco field.  He had been called by the manager of the Team Store and they had explained the problem.  The Safeco staff had gone looking throughout the stadium, and one worker had found one of these old wall clings on the wall of the players’ locker room.  They said they would like my grandmother to have it, no charge.  There was a game about to start and parking was a nightmare, so  he would be waiting outside on the corner for me in 20 minutes so I didn’t even need to get out of the car.

That night, with Edgar back on her wall, my grandma was again at peace.  That evening we went through that ’95 lineup many times.

Today, that Edgar wall-cling now lives above my desk in my office, where I often touch it when I  enter the room, remembering my grandmother.  Every time I watch my beloved Mariners, I think of her, and of the language that baseball gave us through the years when so much language failed her.  I love the Mariners, and honestly, I truly don’t care much whether they win or lose.  I love them because of the people at Safeco field, taking a wall cling off the players’ wall and standing on a street corner in the rain, waiting for me.  I love them because of that ’95 lineup, and those players that gave us a touchstone of communication and shared joy for all of those years.

We need to always remember that everyone has their languages that have nothing to do with the words being spoken, and be sensitive to those.  Sometimes baseball isn’t baseball at all; it’s the love a granddaughter has, and always will have, for her grandmother.  

Sara