7th Inning Stretch
Producer Julie and her 6-year-old head out to the Baseball Hall of Fame
Hello everyone! This is Julie, producer of Parenting is a Joke.
Everyone who knows me knows that I'm not a sentimental person. You, reader, most likely don't know me, so I am starting this post with that disclaimer!
First off - our podcast crew is on summer vacation this week! We're probably all experiencing a mix of struggling to sunscreen our children, finding sand everywhere, and begging our children to eat more than gummies and Pop Corners -- so on the podcast this week, we're bringing back one of our favorite interviews of Season 1 in honor of his upcoming multi-city tour, friend of the show - the hilarious comedian Roy Wood Jr! Listen Here!
Last week for me was peak summer transition chaos:
Baseball camp was canceled two days in a row because of rain.
Both kids got stung by bees and declared they were never going outside again.
We had an ant infestation in our house.
Not to mention the HOLY SHIT feeling of squeezing a work day into your kids' 3-hour camp "day."
To shake off the summer struggle, my husband and I planned to make weekend trips individually with our twin 6-year-olds. My husband and daughter headed to Quebec City, and my son and I went to Cooperstown, NY.
I like baseball. I grew up in a family with a multigenerational devotion to the Boston Red Sox. My grandmother was a tough Irish lady from Southie who taught me every swear word when I was in 2nd grade, several times over, on my first trip to Fenway Park. She also took me to see Carl Yastremski's induction to the Hall of Fame when I was 10 years old. My first date with my now-husband was a baseball game. And despite a career in the arts where most people actively dislike sports (and were traumatically bullied by a jock), I still really enjoy baseball.
My son played on the town rec baseball team this past year and loved it. As an end-of-school-year present (or was it an effort to slow down his obsession with Pokemon cards because I just CAN'T), I gave him my most prized possession: my baseball cards.
I still can't believe that after living in various apartments, homes, and states, most of my collection remained intact. It's truly shocking when you consider the floor of my Subaru is a dumpster, and most of my tote bags have a layer of sticky crust at the bottom. I still had my 1989 Upper Deck box set with Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card, unopened and in its original plastic. According to the baseball card magazines in the 1990s, that deck would be SO VALUABLE. I truly believed my cards would buy me New York real estate.
Walking into the Baseball Hall of Fame with my son had the same magic for me as it did when I went 34 years ago with my grandmother. My son and I spent 4 straight hours wandering the halls and taking in every detail. When we walked through the exhibit about women's baseball, I told him that I didn't like being the only girl on my 4th-grade baseball team, so my mom eventually started a softball league for middle school girls. When we went through the exhibit that tackled racism and injustices in baseball, we took extra time to read every detail about Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Willie Mays and the timeline of the civil rights movement. And when we got to the corner on Babe Ruth and the Curse of the Bambino, I got to tell my son the story about my grandmother putting a piece of "cursed cake" in her freezer in 1986 and not eating it until the Red Sox won a World Series in 2004.
After the museum, we went back to our hotel, swam in the pool, and then played catch outside by the lake. As we played catch, groups of 10 and 11-year-old kids started a whiffle ball game. An Under 12 baseball tournament was going on, so the hotel was crawling with tweens. Watching these kids in their Adidas slides goofing off, nowhere near their parents, was a wild feeling. I was staring into my kid's near future in some way. We went to the tournament game that night - I let my son chase foul balls, eat Skittles at 10 pm, and stay up extra late to organize the baseball cards we got that day.
The next morning we went to wooden bat batting cages, and I let him do as many rounds of tokens as he wanted. He asked if we could go back to the museum before we drove back to Vermont because we didn't see the 15-minute "Generations of the Game" welcome movie they play every hour.
Of course, we went back. Watching footage of Hank Aaron and Ted Williams, seeing iconic ballparks, and hearing players reflect on the meaning of baseball, life, and family got me RIGHT IN THE HEART! I was suddenly crying during the welcome movie! Was it nostalgia? Was it the realization that my son and I were creating a special memory he might tell his future kid about? Was it realizing that if we ever came back, he'd probably be in that tween phase and wouldn't want to play catch with me? WAS I in the 7th inning stretch of my kid's childhood?! Or maybe it's just the joy of perimenopause. Is this the first time someone used the word perimenopause while writing about the Baseball Hall of Fame?!
Was my son an angel the whole time? Of course not. There was crying about wanting to buy a 2nd MLB hat. And he told a shopkeeper that I was born in 1979, so that's why I won't let him get more gum (?). I probably won't remember those moments, but I'll definitely remember the rest.
We’ll be back with a brand new episode of Parenting is a Joke next week with comedian and Tik Tok sensation Zarna Garg. If you’re new to the podcast and this Substack, please subscribe and you can listen to past episodes with amazing comedians here.