Baseball and Romance

Houston, Texas, is not the place to go if romance is on the agenda. Perhaps, that is also another pairing up of beliefs based on personal experiences, but what else do we as people have to go on? My sister and I were in Houston, Texas, for a convention. We were both schoolteachers. We stayed near the Hyatt Regency where the convention was held because we couldn't get reservations in the Hyatt itself. Our friends were two men from Michigan, I will call them Laurel and Hardy to protect their identities and really, if their friends read this, they wouldn't be able to step outside their door without being laughed at. Both of these fellows were professional, one was a stock broker and the other worked in government. I was supposed to go out to places like NASA and dances with the fellow who worked for the government. He was the worst loser I have ever met. I hope his latest date totally intimidates him as he did me back in an equally intimidating city, Houston, Texas.

I remember baseball in Houston, Texas, in the astrodome. The two fellows who suggested that we take in a game of baseball were about as interested in the game as I was. The field was dusty as I recall and we stopped for a Mexican tortilla only I didn't want any and just one of the two guys ate. Now, that is a lie, I didn't want any. Those boors didn't even ask! The stock broker walked up to the stand and stuffed his face with tortillas and looked at us like what, is something happening? We had all just sat through nine innings of a dusty, eerie kind of baseball game.

He gobbled it down and we walked out into a downpour of rain that stuck my clothes to my body and my hair in ringlets around my head. We ran to the busstop and took shelter. I didn't feel much like talking to my date and I remember telling him something like I am planning on going back to Greece.

How ridiculous! I didn't even think about ordering a tortilla for myself. I had a purse. I had money. But it was 1978 and girls on dates were supposed to wait until their date asked them what they wanted. Actually!

That is what I think about baseball. The game has become synonymous with everything about America that should be covered up. That includes its players and their holier than thou attitude because of the huge salaries and incentives they get for showing up. And, when they do show up they don't have to perform. Their game isn't all that important as their salary compared to their opponents. And, if their opponent is looking like the best thing next to Hercules with Zeus as father, then competition becomes a keen edged sword. In sports the motto has become all's fair in how I beat you as long as I win. And that was the attitude of those two boors who took us out to a game in what was to be the worst experience of double dating ever.

On my only baseball game, the only professional game I ever saw, I dumped not only the braying ass that took me there but the game itself. Kind of psychological pairing of two hates make a right or something like that. I know that's not fair to baseball but we tend to associate things with the events that occurred at the same time.

What is even more irking is that I know that neither baseball nor the boors who messed the enjoyment of a really great game care that I have never gone to a professional league baseball game since.