I Been Sick. Play Ball!
I HAVE BEEN SICK FOR THE LAST TEN DAYS with some low grade bug that has had me coughing like an out of tune Pontiac. I’m better today than I was last week and I am confident that I will be completely well by this coming Monday. Why so confident? Because that is when I have a scheduled Doctor appointment.
That’s just the way things work out. It’s like when your car is making that funny noise that hints at demonic possession. When you finally get it into the shop the engine is purring like a kitten.
I can recall that when I was just a kid my mother would occasionally hire a woman to come in and help her with some major housecleaning. I was messy. For three days before that woman would show up my mother would be like a whirling dervish cleaning up everything in sight. Her logic was that she didn’t want the cleaning lady to think that she kept an untidy house.
Go figure. Logical? No. No more dust bunnies under the bed? Yes.
For the last few days I have been forcing myself to stay up late to watch the ballgames. When the Giants are playing on the West Coast the games don’t even start until 10:15 PM. I’m good until about the 6th inning before I fold up like a cheap road map. My eyes slide closed like a garage door and I crawl off to bed with a heavy heart only to wake up the next morning (Thank you, God.) to learn that my boys came back and snatched victory from the mouse trap of defeat.
This has happened three games in a row and I’m beginning to feel like I am somehow involved. I watch – they lose. I go to bed – they win. I’m starting to feel like the chaperone at a reform school dance. The party doesn’t really begin until I leave. It kind of hurts my feelings in a way. It’s not like I’m wearing Dodger pajamas or anything like that – I sleep in standard issue Orange and Black Giant Onesies.
We may think that we are in control of our lives, but I’m beginning to suspect that there are outside forces at play. How else to explain how my coughing like an asthmatic timber wolf cures itself as soon as I arrive at the Doctor’s office?
I might be able to explain the Giants late inning heroics to something as mundane as poor relief pitching by the other team, but the gods of Baseball are tricky little deities. How else can one explain such fiascos as “Ten Cent Beer Night” or “Fried Grasshoppers” are being sold as snack food at the Ballpark in Seattle?
I can live with the self-healing automobile and my on-again, off-again cough, but having the Giants play like champs only when I leave the room? That I cannot abide. A solution must be found.
While the Baseball gods are tricky, they can also be fooled – see one Bartolo Colon, currently a pitcher for the Texas Rangers. He admits to being 43 years old, but why did the candles on his last birthday cake set off the sprinkler system at the ballpark? I bet that Bartolo’s mailbox if filled with stuff from the AARP.
I think I may have to resort to some trickery of my own. Tonight at about the 5th inning I will go change into my sleepers and then walk into the room backwards saying “Good Night.” If I’m subtle, and don’t chew the scenery like William Shatner playing Hamlet, this could work.
I’ll let you know.
Down the Hall on Your Left 