October Baseball

I written before about my nerdy obsessions, here is my current one. For the second year in a row my Texas Rangers have made it to the playoffs. As I write this, we are 2 games to 0 against the Tigers in the American League Championship Series and 2 wins away from our second trip to the World Series!

Some people have told me that, as a nerd, I'm not allowed to like sports at all. But I disagree! For the record Baseball is the only sport I follow which makes me one of about 8 people that live in Texas who don't love the Dallas Cowboys more than life itself. (Luckily for me I'm married to one of the other ones in that extreme minority.) Anyway, if you are REALLY into a sport then you are memorizing stats and comparing players and teams and forming fantasy teams... Hello? Can you say Nerdy? In my opinion it takes more work to keep up with that kind of stuff than it does to memorize lines from Star Wars. That movie is 35 years old and the lines aren't changing. Well, okay, some of them changed and we all know that was just wrong. I should have picked a different example but you know what I mean. Baseball stats are changing all the time and it's much harder to keep up.

My love of the game is more emotionally based. I don't memorize things on purpose. I get attached to the players. For example, my current celebrity crush is C.J. Wilson. Alright, I just heard 3 of the 4 people that read this blog say, "Who?" He's the current lead starting pitcher and he's got sideburns that could complete with the 10th Doctor. ;) I get sad when a player I like is traded (I still miss Salty) and I feel bad for them when they mess up and I miss them in the lineup when they have an injury. There are also some players I don't care for and I get angry at the manager for allowing them in the game. I get happy when they win and sad when they lose. And I often refer to myself as part of the team. (See first paragraph.)

As we are now into the playoffs and every game is so important, my life has made some adjustments. When there is a day game I listen to the radio instead of podcasts at work. I send out mass text messages to my fellow fans as we all ride this wave together. I base the days that I will take Collin to Karate class on if there is a game that night or not. (He doesn't want to go most of the time so he's not upset about this.) Tonight the game ran long. Four and a half hours and 12 innings kind of long! I think I was holding my breath for the last 3 innings at least and I KNOW this my blood pressure has to be higher this month than it was in September. As a result my sweet boys got to stay up late which they loved. Owen was in the living room with me and we were waving our rally towels and yelling for our team. When Nelly hit that beautiful walk-off Grand Slam I'm sure the neighbors could hear us screaming! I felt bad about the kids getting to bed late. It was only 20 minutes but I like to keep us on a schedule since they have to wake up so early. I hope they will be okay for tomorrow. But this will all be over, win or lose, by the end of the month and we can get back on track.

The magic of your team playing October baseball is a wonderful thing. Like experiencing a new season of Doctor Who, or anxiously waiting for a Harry Potter book or movie. I am loving every minute of it and all too soon it will be gone and I'll be left with an empty feeling and  wondering what's on tv.

As a tribute to those of you that visit hoping to hear cute kid stories, I have one. I hope this is not TMI for anyone, but I think it's incredibly funny. You need to know ahead of time that Owen saw my birth control pills once and commented that he wanted some of my "candy" so I had to make up a story to keep him from wanting them.... Now Owen has only been potty-trained for 5 months or so and he's done exceptionally well, but he still gets scared to go by himself and wants me in there. I'm willing to do this most of the time since he did all the work and trained himself, I figure I owe him. It seems as least once every few days as he is conducting his business he comments that I am a girl and therefore I don't have a pee-pee like he does. I confirm his statement. Then he continues with "And if I eat some of your medicine then I will turn into a girl and my pee-pee will go away." Again, I confirm this is also true and then I start to wonder what his pre-school teacher must think goes on in our house.