BASEBALL

      For those of us who love baseball, there is no other sport like it. The team, the game, the players, the ballpark, the announcers, the fans, the traditions, they all go into what makes baseball so great.

     For those who don't love baseball, it's always the same complaint. "It's too slow."

     Not for me. I am on the edge of my seat throughout a baseball game, and sometimes the tension rises so much when I am watching a game on television that I have to leave the room. We can never be enough runs ahead to be complacent. The game can turn so quickly, and a 4-0 lead can become
a 4-6 loss.

     I've heard it said that baseball is the quintessential American sport. Players are on a team, yet each individual at bat has the power to change the entire course of the game. Besides that, you score when you run home, how sweet is that!

     Going to the ballpark is such a great experience too, the food, the fans, the afternoon in the sun, or evening under the stars. But baseball is also great on the radio. The announcers make the experience of listening so wonderful, and all of the background crowd noises add to the excitement. Televised baseball is another experience, seeing the players up close and personal, watching a replay or  the reaction in the dugout.

      I thank my mom more than anyone else for my love of baseball. When I was a little girl, the San Francisco Giants had "Ladies Day" on Thursday home games. The games had a special reduced rate, which may have been as low as a dollar. My mom, her best friend, Marie, Marie's son, Glen, and I would all board the muni bus for the long ride out to Candlestick Park and a wonderful day at the game.

     Our new ballpark in San Francisco is very beautiful, with a terrific view of the water and boats, great food and atmosphere. But Ladies Day is a thing of the past, of course. Going to the ballpark, especially with a family, is terrifically expensive now.

     I had a neighbor who was from Germany. Her husband was a scientist at a local bio tech firm, and she knew many other European ladies who were also in the USA because of their husbands' jobs. The ladies were from Poland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Turkey, Spain, Belgium. They sometimes asked me to join them on outings. Baseball was such a mystery to them. They all hated it and were particularly incensed by the World Series.

     "How can they call it the "world" series?" one would complain.

     "I know," another would say. "Soccer is the only game."

      "And the World Cup actually invites the world."

     "Besides, it's so slow."

      I tried to explain but soon gave up. They were never going to understand because even though they lived here for years. The World Series is such an American concept. The biggest, the best,the greatest, the World Series.

       The San Francisco Giants had a mediocre season this year. But that's okay, there's always next year. Because, after all, What would life be without baseball?

   

THE ABBY BOB SHOW

     Before our first granddaughter was born, my husband and I contemplated what we wanted her to call us. His choice was "Poppy", which is what he called his own grandfather. I called my grandmothers "Grandma", differentiated by their first names, Grandma Manya and Grandma Marian. But the name "Grandma" made me feel old, so I decided that Molly would call me "Grammy". We would be Grammy and Poppy.

     However, as has proved true over the years, Molly had her own idea. Somehow Grammy and Poppy became Abby and Bob.

    To me, it sounds like a comedy team. In some ways, being a grandparent is a little like being part of a comedy act. We often work together to make our granddaughters laugh and smile. Bah-da-da-bum.

     The first time I was really aware of it was a day when my husband and I were at the playground with Molly. She was probably about one and a half years old then. My husband had gone to the car to get the sand toys and Molly called to him.

     She said, "Bob! Bob!"

      Another grandma, who was standing near to me, gave me a funny look, as if to say, "You let your little granddaughter call her grandfather by his first name?"

     So I said to her, "Oh, his name isn't actually Bob."

     Which made absolutely no sense.

     Over the years, Molly has begun calling my husband Poppy, except when she is referring to both of us. Then we still are AbbyBob. The day we babysit each week is AbbyBob Day. And I had to laugh when we took her to her swimming lesson and she pointed us out to the teacher saying, "There's AbbyBob." I don't think the swim teacher had any idea what Molly was talking about.

     But I'm still Abby. I kind of like it. It's unique. I don't know if it will last, though. Our giggly little Hannah is fifteen months old now, and may have her own name ideas. Whatever it is, I hope the comedy act continues.

   

DRIFTERS

     A few evenings ago my husband was sorting through some old letters. One was from his grandmother, written in 1972, when he was just twenty years old. She was writing in response to his desire to have a career as a professional photographer. Grandma was trying to talk him out of it. She was worried that by thirty he would be a "Drifter".

     Whoa.

     In some ways her points were understandable from her point of view. Her husband died young and she had survived the Depression mostly on her own, raising three children. She valued hard work and independence. She equated photography to a show business career, a field where there isn't room enough for everyone to make a living. Her solution was to work hard, even if it was a job one hated, put money aside and buy a house one day. That was about all one could expect.

     Whoa again.

     I found it surprising that she didn't offer a solution of education to find a career in a more lucrative field. I mostly found it surprising, and sad, that a twenty year old wouldn't be allowed to follow a dream, at least for a few years. In fact, my husband did become a professional photographer and has been successful at it all these years. He has worked hard.

     Drifter indeed.

     Of course, all this talk of Drifters made me think about Hank Williams, about whom I wrote a picture book biography. The people in Hank's bands changed over the years but all of his bands, starting from when he was very young, were called The Drifting Cowboys. I find so much romance in that name.

      Drifters and Hank made me also think of one of my favorite songs that he sings, "Lost Highway". "When I pass by, all the people say, just another guy on the lost highway". This is a sad song, a cautionary tale, about a man's life. I guess Grandma saw a lot of drifters in Oklahoma, where she was from, "rolling stones, all alone and lost".

      But her grandson certainly wasn't one of them.

I MISS THE CIRCUS

     I miss the circus. The Stupendous, Colossal, Death Defying Circus.

     I realize it's not politically correct to say so. Yet I'd like to shout it from the rooftops. I MISS THE CIRCUS.

     There really is nothing else like it, the acts, the people, the entire subculture of the circus. Cirque du Soleil is a nice show, but it's not the circus, the real circus, the gritty, fabulous, place apart circus. The circus is its own subculture, a world unto itself unlike any other.

    And no one can run away to it anymore.

     I wrote a book about the circus once called THE AMAZING TROMBONI MOVE IN. It is about a world, a town, without the circus. People in Hartleyville banned the circus because they said it is dirty and dangerous, filled with animals and strange looking people. I wanted to write about a circus family who moved to a town like Hartleyville, a sad, conventional town, and brought their own magic with them, their squirting flowers and trained chimps, their trapeze acts and big floppy shoes. It's my favorite story I've ever written.

     But I never expected that the circus really would be banned, forgotten, taken out of existence. Barnum and Bailey is gone, and small circuses are struggling internationally. So much of  the circus has been vilified too.

     Take clowns. They have become scary. But clowns are wonderful. Fellini's great movie, Clowns, is one of my favorites, about the artistry of clowns. There is the whole idea of clowns becoming other, unique, fabulous to make folks laugh, not to scare them.

     I miss trapeze, tightrope walkers, ringmasters, and yes, even trained animals. As Grandpa Tromboni tells the family in my story,

     “I knew a man who knew a man who knew a man who left the circus. Moved to a little town and bought himself a house to live in.”
     “I knew no such man,” Grandma said. “Is who?”   
     “What I mean is,” Grandpa continued, “it may be time to try something new, to try a life outside the circus.”

     “Is there a life outside the circus?” Grandma asked."

     I guess we will have to see if there is.