I finally found the field where my Dead Ex-Husband’s brother was playing ball yesterday morning. (It was tucked all the way in the corner of a township baseball complex I didn’t even know was there.)
Ex-Brother-in-Law had the power, but his swing was off and the most he got while I was there was a single. He had a pop-up that could have been a single, but he didn’t run out the ball. (Fundamentals, guys, fundamentals.)
Anyway, ballplayers are such nosy old ladies. Three or four times, one came over to say, “So, who are you here with?”
I pointed. “I came to see my ex-brother-in-law play.”
One time, this happened while I was behind the batting cage while my ex-BIL was at bat. “Oh, does your brother know his ex is here?” one of them taunted.
“I don’t know. He’s dead,” I said cheerily. “I mean, I believehe knows, but I can’t prove it.”
“She’s the mother of my nephews,” BIL explained. “Whyshouldn’t she be here?”
When his team was in the field, I sat in the bleachers – where someone had erected a screened canopy that covered the seating area. Another nosy ballplayer came over: “Where are you from?” I told him I used to cover one of their tournaments for the league magazine. I don’t remember how it came up, but I told him about watching a bench-clearing dispute in a championship semi-final when one of the pitchers threw underhanded.
“You should have seen the look on the batter’s face,” I said. “The other team cleared the bench: ‘Blue, he can’t do that!’ The ref said, ‘Oh yes, he can.’ One of the funniest things I ever saw.”
“One of the guys was just talking about that,” the ballplayer said with admiration. (To these guys, a woman talking baseball is much like the old saw about the talking dog. It’s not that he does it well, but that he does it at all.)
I said how nice it was to have a shade canopy over the bleachers. “Very civilized,” I told him.
“Well, you know, for a couple of weeks, some of the players had their wives and kids here,” he said. “It was really, really hot…”
I know ballplayers; I could see where this was going.
“And they were in the dugout. So now we put this up.”
“Can’t have that,” I said, nodding. Because you can’t. Other people may call it a game, but it’s serious.
