How two baseball stars made me cry, in a good way

Ian was excited to give me my birthday present. "Do you want it now, or at your party?" he asked a week early.

"Party," I said, and he looked disappointed, but he complied. So on the day of my birthday party, January 5, 2014, he gave me my present.

"Open the card first," he said, with that crooked smile of his. On the inside, he had written, "Get #3 on this." I looked at him questioningly. "Or David Price," he said, his grin widening. And that's when I figured out "#3" was referring to star third-baseman for the Rays, Evan Longoria.

I opened up the present, and it was a Tampa Bay Rays baseball. I love collecting team baseballs, although I don't usually get autographs on them, as their quality is bad and usually the autograph fades. But it was such a sweet, thoughtful gift from Ian, a Tampa-area native, and I thought, even though these big stars were probably out of my ability to get, I would try to get their autographs, then show him and impress him.

But what made the ball even more special was that he bought it at all. Ian rarely had two dimes to rub together. He was finishing up his senior year of college and paying his own way. While his soccer scholarship paid for part of his education, it also prevented him from working much, so money was tight. The fact that he got it for me at all was lovely. But it also looked like it was bought used. The plastic casing was cracked and there was no label on it. There was a little tear along the seam on one side. Maybe it was even his once and he was giving it to me. I am the kind of person who LOVES used gifts. Find me some books at a thrift store or a weird necklace at a garage sale, and I am so touched. Ian knew that I absolutely loved baseball and the Rays were one of my favorite teams. So this was special to me, very sweet and very dear.

Exactly two weeks after my party, I came home from Soxfest, having had a really great day, only to find out that Ian was dead. He was the victim of an apparent suicide, although I still have my doubts about all of that, but that is a story for another day. It didn't really matter why, but he was gone. Ian, talented soccer player, brilliant biology major, about to be an officer in the Marines, was never going to come over again. We were all devastated. My family loved Ian as if he were already our brother-in-law. He practically lived with us the previous summer and spent his free time with our family. He was nerdy enough to talk excitedly to my stepdad about science, but sweet enough to go with my sister to a Jonas Brothers concert. No one was more devastated than Jennie, who had planned to spend the rest of her life with Ian. I guess we all took for granted Ian's presence in our family. It was whole with him and now there was a hole without him.

I put the card from him and the baseball in a box. I couldn't really look at it. My dad had died a month earlier, and I still hadn't really faced that. I have never been afraid of death--when it's time to go, you go. My dad was relatively young when he died at 65, but, besides that, he had been in hospice for a few weeks and I knew it was coming. But not Ian, not 22-years young and funny and thoughtful Ian. So I was pretty angry at death now. I know God is the one who orders our days, so maybe I was mad at Him, but I don't think so. I never looked at it as God's fault. I think I was just mad that death had to exist, thanks to our stupid sin. I was mad at mental illness and depression, because that's what took Ian ultimately. I guess I was really mad at Ian, because I didn't think he was thinking about how our family would be lost and crying for days without him, how my sister was destroyed. Did he imagine that I, who was not even as close to him as most of my family, would still cry about him on a weekly basis three months after he left? So I hid the stuff he gave me because seeing it made me remember the things I loved about him and it was so much easier to be angry.

But when baseball season started, I knew I had to try to get those autographs. The Rays came into town to play the Sox this weekend, and they play the Cubs later on, in August. That gave me 7 games to try to fulfill his wish. Friday night I tried, but no luck, and then the doubt crept in and I just didn't want to do it. I didn't want to carry this stupid ball around anymore, empty of autographs. For some reason, it made me sob, and I was at a freaking baseball game for crying out loud. There's no crying in baseball!

The next day, Saturday, I arrived early in the hopes of catching one of them pulling in to the park. My friend Cisco, who works in the parking lot, knew my story. He had actually been with me the day Ian died. Cisco told me that he had spoken to David Price and told him a little about me, and Price said he wanted to hear my story. That was really nice of Cisco, but I didn't actually believe David Price cared one dot about my story. I'm sure people have all kinds of stories they use to get autographs. I was still going to try, though.

When I got inside, I assumed my regular post by the dugout. There were about 40 people there, and they all wanted Longoria and Price. They were shouting for the guys, which is rude, but I get it. But I started to get mad, thinking how a lot of these guys would probably sell the stuff and they didn't want the autographs like I did. They didn't understand that for me to have some kind of peace in my heart, I had to get this stupid ball signed.

Then Evan Longoria jogged over. And he jogged right to where I was standing. I couldn't speak, just held out the ball. He signed it and I tried to thank him, but at this point, I was crying way too hard to say much. Evan didn't notice and I know I was just another greedy grapher to him, but when he signed that ball for me, it was like a dam had burst, but one you wanted to burst. I wanted to know that I could fulfill the birthday wish Ian gave me. I immediately smeared the signature, but that was okay. Even if I never got Price, I had done what he asked in the card. I could put the ball on a shelf and I could stop worrying about getting it signed.

Except that, when batting practice ended, David Price, one of the best pitchers of our time, came jogging over, too. And right to me. He took the ball from me, signed it, then said, "I want to hear your story." So I told him, as best as I could as the tears flowed freely. And as the graphers shoved their books in front of me and pressed against me and completely ignored the sobbing girl in front of them, David Price looked at me, and I could see that he really cared, even though he didn't know me and didn't know why this was such a big deal.

"Aw, come on, now, don't cry," he said, and he looked so sad himself. "I gotta give you a hug. Move back, people." And the crowd grudgingly parted, and the great David Price took me in his arms and hugged me.

I don't know how heaven works, but am I crazy to hope Ian saw that?

I am so thankful for both Longoria and Price, who took time for the fans, even though they have no idea why it was such a big deal. The graphers around me, oblivious to my crying, asked me why I got that cheap ball signed and not a baseball card. They're idiots. That cheap ball with the smeared autographs is now on a shelf above my bed, and I prize it more highly than almost anything else. I always will, and I will always love those two guys.

Why I love that dump called Wrigley Field

I've touched the ivy. I've run in the outfield and kicked up infield dirt. I've stood in the same places where Ruth and Banks and Sandberg walked and ran and laughed. There's hardly a seat in that stadium I don't know. I've sat in the uppermost corner where you can see absolutely everything, small and far, but clear and true. And I've sat right behind home plate, so close that I could have touched the players if it weren't for the netting, so close that I could see the sweat beading the foreheads of the most beautiful people I have ever known. I've sat in the famous bleachers, listening to the heckling and trying to catch the balls during B.P. I've seen it all from everywhere.

If you have never been to Wrigley Field, you cannot possibly understand the uniqueness, the beauty, the art of the field. It comes out of nowhere. You can't see it from the highway. You have to find it. You have to look for it. I love the feeling of walking down Sheridan past the fancy brick buildings where all the rich people live, and then it's there, almost like an afterthought, almost like someone shoved it in the middle of a neighborhood because it didn't fit anywhere else. It looks a little bit like it's bursting at the seams, pieces of it spilling onto the sidewalk, fans spilling onto the streets because there's nowhere else to walk.

On game days, the endless array of Wrigleyville bars are busy and loud many hours before the game, many hours after. Cubs fans like their liquor, probably a little more than they like their baseball. They can tell you what beers Wrigley has on tap, but will have trouble naming four active players on the team. I saw a shirt once that said "Win or Lose, We Still Booze." That is probably the best description of Cubs fans, fans that come in the third inning and leave in the seventh, after the historic stretch that is different than at any other ballpark. Harry Caray made "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" more than a song--he made it an entity of itself ("Let's get some runs!"). And now in his absence someone famous and Chicagoey will sing it, and you can look across the groups of fans, blue caps in the air swaying to the music, and jerseys laced with names of players long gone, because most players don't stay with the Cubs. We Cubs fans know this and accept this; we hold onto our boys loosely. The ones we love best will either become mediocre or will be traded. There was a time before I existed when the Cubs unit was consistent. These days, the good ones never stay. They are just commodities to be traded for some phantom championship team we are promised will come later, but never does.

But don't think about wins and losses when you look at Wrigley, because you will be too disappointed to enjoy the experience. You will walk inside the dark concourse toward the stairs, and you have to stop. You have to tell yourself that you will never again see Wrigley Field for the first time. And then you will walk from darkness into that bright, bright sun, and you will see greener grass than you thought existed. You will see the stark white of the uniforms, the balls flying off the bats in practice, you will run to the fence that keeps us mere mortals off the field, and you will be closer to baseball than you deserve to be. Turn to the left and see a young boy with a too-large glove who keeps asking if a player will come over for an autograph. Turn to the right and see a pair of elderly gentleman arguing about the merits of Castro and Rizzo, and years ago Sandberg and Grace, and even years earlier as young professionals after work discussing Jenkins and Williams. Cubs fans start young and never leave. We die at Wrigley. We are doomed and cursed and trapped.

We are teased just enough to stick around. Right now, we have the promise of their farm system, full of the best prospects in baseball. The word is out that we will have a championship caliber team in less than five years. And in the early part of this century, our hopes were never higher than October of 2003, five outs away from history, with the unhittable Wood and Prior leading our team to victories, only to be destroyed as quickly as Steve Bartman's safety on a cool October night. My heart was broken so completely that October night, and in the following nights, and I have never allowed myself to hope that much again.

But here's the thing. The players change. They get terrible or they leave us. We remember with a sharp pain watching Kerry Wood's career dissolve. I sat a few feet away from where he threw his glove into the stands in disgust, and, just days later, I listened on the radio, tears running down my face, the evening Kerry Wood's young son came running out to him after the last strikeout of his career. I remember Sandberg retiring twice. I remember watching Shawon Dunston, my dad's personal favorite, turn singles into doubles, wheels churning around the bases, and then suddenly he was gone. I always get attached to the relief pitchers, and they NEVER stay. I loved Quirky Turk Wendell in the 90's and I love Blake Parker now and no one stays. I watched Darwin Barney, whose fielding is as poetic and beautiful as his name isn't, and I see him sitting the bench now and know is days are numbered.

But Wrigley will not change. Even if they put up the gratuitously enormous television screens and make the clubhouses better for the players and add all kinds of fancy stuff, they will never take away that ivy, they will never take away the green of the grass, the old scoreboard and marquee. I will see those familiar landmarks, and the kids will still be there, and the old guys will still be there, and I will still be there. I want to leave, but I can't.When I'm at Wrigley, I'm home.

Baseball Sans Dad

It’s harder than I thought to watch baseball without my father. I’m sadder than I thought I would be for longer than I thought I would be. It’s surprising how choked up I feel right now as I write, yet also how compelled I feel to write. I had meant to keep my blog up-to-date this season, but I begin to write, and my fingers cramp, and my heart aches, and I wonder if my dad is watching baseball now, somehow, or if he’s watching me and thinking that he is also surprised about how much I miss him.

I have wanted to call him so many times already, have even stupidly reached for my phone and then remembered that it doesn’t work like that anymore. I see fathers with their sons, and it just hurts so much that we will never watch a game together again. My eyes will randomly fill as I watch the game, out of nowhere, because of nothing, except a deep, searing emptiness.

So this baseballgirl is going to try to get back to the writing, but it may take a while. In the meantime, just cherish the ones you have, even those diehard White Sox fans like my dad who wanted to see another Crosstown Series and who would have secretly rooted for the Cubs, just for me.