The last time I saw the Phillies play in the World Series, it was 1993. Chris and I were waving around a craft-store bird painted blue and hung upside down from a golf putter as a taunt to the Blue Jays. Kudos to our friend Jim Fryer who created the effigy. At the time, Ian was two years old and I was taking fertility drugs.
This is relevant because, nine months after the last nine innings, the drugs resulted in Hugh, with whom I sat last night. Since he was only a Clomid washed down by ballpark beer in ’93, I’m not sure that means that technically he has attended a World Series before. But last night, he saw every pitch and every swing and he was overjoyed (a huge thank you to our fabulous friend Frank for the tickets).
This kid loves sports, both as a spectator and as a player. I can completely see him landing a job with ESPN one day. Here he is, seconds after the Phillies became the champions.
Not even the weird guy standing in front of us, blocking our view by obsessively taking photos of the Phanavision screen and random crowd shots, could dampen our enthusiasm. Not even when Humorless Odd Photographer got miffed when my rally towel disturbed the air over his hair. A piece of red fluff landed in his coif and he didn’t know it was there. HA! Take that, cranky dude. I’m like my mother – she would go to a baseball game and, even if the bases were loaded and nobody was out, would focus on how many hot dogs the man across the aisle consumed. Despite my chronic people critiquing, I did actually also watch the game – and it was thrilling. Here’s the scene in the parking lot before, which looks way more illegal than it was.
And over in the rowdy section behind Pat Burrell where Chris and Malcolm were sitting, yes, Single Baseball Fan, two MORE balls landed right in their hula hoop – but Chris was not there for one of them, and the kids directly in front of M got the other – which was the Ray’s homer – so they did the right thing and threw it back.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to write the brothers some notes getting them out of school for the parade tomorrow. I already know they’re going to have a raging Phever.
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