Baseball Widow

Game 3: Westside Red Bulls Lose, But From The Sports Widow's Perspective, They're Winners

July 22, 2008 8:30 PM | 0 Comments

Well, I got The Call. My sports fan husband Bryan phoned home to tell me the sad news: My 10-year-old son Austin's Little League Baseball All Stars team, the Westside Red Bulls, narrowly lost their third game in the Washington State Tournament, which marks the end of The Road to Vancouver. The score was 6-5.

I confess, I shed some tears, because I can honestly say that I have NEVER cared about the outcomes of any games the way I have this baseball season. If you read some of my earlier blog entries, I may have been hazy on the details, but I've never been hazy about the emotions (well, there have been times when I've secretly wished it would all end, but I mostly wanted the end to be caused by factors that were entirely out of their control, like aliens landing or torrential rains). For the first time in my life, a sport was personalized. It was MY tender, 10-year-old son duking it out with his teammates. I still can't decide if, in our giddy excitement, we placed too much pressure on their young shoulders. For fans like my husband Bryan, the Westside Redbulls' bid for the championship was a deferred childhood dream. Not that my husband was living vicariously through his son, but he knew the magic of this situation, the once-in-a-lifetime element.

For me, I will always have an image of Austin emblazoned in my memory, the image of him pitching on the night everyone remembers as The Austin Hall Show. On that night, Austin was ON. He handily dispensed with all of his opponents. He smiled, dimples showing. He skipped off the field. His glee could not be suppressed. As Austin drifted off to sleep that night, he murmured: "This was the best day of my life."

I hope he will remember how he got on The Road to Vancouver: Undefeated in the regular season, district champions, contenders at state. Now, that's incredible.

The Sports Widow
(aka Nan Hall)