Mom Loves Baseball

Mom loves baseball. She enjoys most sports, in fact. She is the one who taught me how to play basketball. She would challenge me one-on-one in the alley on the hoop a few doors down or whoop me repeatedly in games of H-O-R-S-E. But mom has a special relationship with baseball, especially the St. Louis Cardinals.

Me, mom, & dad at a game 2 years ago.

"My grandparents were huge Cardinal fans," mom shared. "Anytime they were playing, we had the radio on. We would sit in the yard with a bucket of beer and listen to the game."

My almost 80-year-old mom has been listening to or watching the Cardinals her whole life and now, she is just as dedicated and loyal as her grandparents. It really upsets her if anyone tries to assassinate the character of her team. She would never say anything bad about them.

Mom and dad walking to their seats at the
baseball hall of fame induction ceremony.

Her favorite players are Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina, mostly because she no longer recognizes the guys on the team. Even if they have been on the team a few years, she can't remember them. During today's game, she repeatedly said, "I've never heard of that guy" even though they both had been on the team for a while. The grief that comes with her Alzheimers is directly related to her inability to remember recent events, people, etc. The joy, however, comes in her ability to remember stories from her childhood that we have never before heard.

The family at a game in the bleachers
a few years ago.

She loves watching sports because, while the rest of us might be looking at records and standings, mom doesn't have to remember what happened last game in order to enjoy the current game. It's also relatively easy for the rest of us because she knows how the game works, she understands the rules and she doesn't ask a lot of questions, aside from, "who is this guy?"

Today she made a request. She wants to sit in the "green seats" at Busch. She wants to eat in the dining area and sit in the expensive seats and have somebody wait on her. There is no way I can afford that on my teacher salary. I can barely afford groceries. But I told her yes. ABSOLUTELY. If I have to drive 12 hours shifts for Uber to make it happen I will. I want to give her that experience just once. It is the least I can do.