Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Rooting for the home team
Yesterday was a perfect day for baseball. The sun was shining and the sky was blue and the temperature was just right for a day game at Busch Stadium. I think the seats were sold out. Panoramic sweeps of the stadium showed a sea of red with a few Blue Jay fans sprinkled around. Before the game there was the usual opening fanfare, including those magnificent Clydesdales trotting around the perimeter. Rose and I missed that part because we were driving out to St. Peters to watch at least part of the game with our friend Mary. No matter. They will be back next year.
Perhaps the biggest surprise happened during the anthem singing. First came, “O Canada”, played on an electric violin. It is a beautiful melody. When it was time for the “Banner” song no performer appeared. Instead, veteran pitcher Adam Wainwright strolled up to the microphone and started singing. He has a great deep voice and is apparently quite the musician. I think his teammates were caught by surprise. I know the fans were! Of course, Rose knew that he writes songs and has produced a few CD’s.
There are new rules in major league baseball this year. Pitchers have a set time of 15 seconds to hurl the ball. Batters have to be in the box and ready to hit for at least 8 seconds before the ball comes their way. All this to reduce the time that pitchers spend fiddling around on the mound. Batters no longer can step out of the box and readjust their batting gloves, wasting precious game time. Pitchers can no longer try to throw out a runner over and over again. They get two tries. That’s it.
Rules on the field have been adjusted as well. If I understand it, the offense players can no longer shift right or left to have a better chance of intercepting a hit. This means that fans will see more successful at bats and perhaps a higher scoring game.
All of these rules, and more that I don’t understand well enough to write about, are intended to make the game go faster than the average 3+ hours. As much as I love the game, I’m glad. However, yesterday’s game took at least three hours because each team kept scoring and the lead kept changing.
As the song goes, “If they don’t win it’s a shame”, and the Redbirds lost to the Bluebirds. It was still a good game. We watched three innings of it with our friend who used to go to ballgames with us and who, because of illness, can no longer attend games. Life has been hard on her and it has changed drastically for her and her family. But we started joking back and forth and the sound of her laughter was beautiful. We stayed until she was too polite to tell us she was tired. We exchanged big hugs and a couple of tears and left, promising to come back.
On the way home Rose and I processed the changes in our friend. First we were silent then we exchanged observations. We were grateful that her sense of humor is still with her, although she may not have much to laugh about these days. We were envious because she has lost weight and it looks good on her. She was beautifully dressed, as usual, and she looked elegant in her outfit. After we added up the positives came the sadness because of the way her life has changed. But she is precious and always will be. We’ll be back.