Soon we will be rescued from two months of ho-hum televised sports viewing with opening of the baseball season. Huzzah!
I know, I know, baseball has an image problem. The fan base is shrinking. Many consider it boring. You know what? I don't care. I feel the same way about certain sports, so, non-baseball fans, I share your pain. You watch your stupid boring sport, and I'll watch something worth watching. How anyone who watched the final game of the 2016 World Series thinks baseball is boring is beyond me. But I digress.
Okay, full disclosure: I have powerful, sentimental motivation to follow a sport that admittedly can be a bit of a slog if you're not familiar with the game. My dad was a multi-sport athlete in high school and earned a baseball scholarship to Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas (my birthplace). Alpine is out in the far west mountainous triangle-shaped frontier of Texas. Back then it was just a wide spot on the road. but it was a real baseball hotspot due to the obsession of wealthy rancher Herbert Kokernot. Dad played for Mr. Kokernot's Alpine Cowboys until he was signed by the Milwaukee Braves in 1956. He pitched for the Braves in their farm system for a few years before realizing the baseball biz wasn't likely to support his growing family. Oh, how times have changed.
Opening Day always opens the memory floodgates of our family baseball lore. There's the tawdry yet amusing shenanigans of baseball wives (told by my mom - about other wives, natch - Dad claims no knowledge of any such goings on). Mom does wish we'd quit telling about the time she dashed out of her seat to dodge an incoming foul ball tip, leaving me behind, an innocent, gormless infant, blissfully unaware of the 70 mph cowhide-wrapped bullet of death about to rain down on my head. Handy tip: foul tips are possibly the lone disadvantage of players' wives getting those great seats behind the home dugout.
I'm thrilled to be able to show you the hilarious grainy video of the players milking cows on the mound as a publicity stunt. Luckily for my dad, he was a country boy born and raised. He knew his way around a set of udders just as well as he did a baseball diamond.
I am able to share with you an example of the requisite yellowed newspaper clippings like the one here, bragging up my dad as 'the big righthander' and 'fireballer' and the pitcher of not one but TWO shutouts in post-season play as a highschooler. Ain't no thang. Just two shutouts. In two appearances. Probably in the same week. Yawn.
This is why, at the Jones household, we understand why the baseball pitcher's arm is considered the most valuable body part in professional sports. This is why the Rangers' devastating loss to the Cardinals in the sixth game of the 2011 World Series still gets me a little choked up (we will not speak of this *sniff*). And this is why I'm so freakin' pumped for baseball season to start. Got the hat. Got the shirt. Got the remote. Let the games begin.
A version of this article first appeared in the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge.