The stay-at-home dad: Quarantine baseball season
Quarantine baseball season
By TYLER WILSON
For Coeur Voice
Another week trapped in the house with four kids. Normal routines for the kids help, though rainy and cold weather has recently limited the “burn off some energy” outside time that is essential to living with little monsters. Still, we find any and every opportunity to recreate regular life.
A big deal for me every year is Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season. As a diehard Minnesota Twins fan, Opening Day is a day for hopeful celebration. Anything can happen, including a possible march to World Series victory. And sure, deep down, us Twins fans know the season will likely end with a pummeling by the New York Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, but we don’t need to think about that right now.
This year, of course, the baseball season has been delayed, and it’s a strong possibility the entire season could be cancelled. And the Twins were supposed to be so good! Like maybe win one game against the Yankees good!
No Opening Day festivities this year, though MLBTV tried to appease the baseball fanatics by broadcasting classic recent games for each franchise. The Mariners feed had Felix Hernandez’s perfect game from 2012, and the Twins aired the 2009 Game 163 tiebreaker bout against the Detroit Tigers that took place at the now-demolished Metrodome.
Game 163 went 12 innings and is considered one of the greatest games in Twins history, ranked right there alongside their World Series runs in 1987 and 1991. I frequently harass my kids with Twins facts and stats, and I generally commit the living room TV to many, many games throughout a typical season, so it made sense to expose the kids to this rare happy moment in the franchises’ otherwise mediocre recent history.
The kids “like” baseball as much as any children under the age of 8 could. Mostly, they like going to live games to eat ice cream bars, hot dogs and cotton candy. This doesn’t happen at home, so they don’t generally care about some random Twins game on a Wednesday afternoon in April. That’s fine. Ultimately, I don’t care if they like baseball. Just so long as they don’t become Yankee fans.
Anyway, the little kids just ignore televised baseball in the house. My 8-year-old daughter, however, likes to harass me with questions about the logistics of the game. There was a point maybe a year ago when she legitimately tried to learn all the weird rules of baseball, but now I think she enjoys pestering me about the glorious convolutions of the sport.
HER: “Oh, it’s the ninth inning. It’s going to end with a tie.”
ME: “Well, no. They’ll play extra innings.”
HER: “You said baseball games have nine innings.”
ME: “Yes, unless it’s tied and then they play extra innings.”
HER: “How many extra innings?
ME: “Whatever it takes for someone to get ahead.”
HER: “So if that team scores they win?
ME: “Well unless the Twins can score in the bottom of the inning.”
HER: “That doesn’t make any sense.”
This is probably the simplest version of our conversations, so you can imagine how long it takes to explain strikes vs. balls, strikeouts vs. walks, outs vs. hits, what makes outs, how taking four bases leads to scoring a single run, etc.
No matter how detailed the topic, almost all the conversations end with her saying, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
So I turn on the 2009 Game 163, and she’s just messing with me the whole time.
HER: “I thought you said they aren’t playing baseball because of the virus.”
ME: “They aren’t. This is a really exciting game from before you were born.”
HER: “Have you seen it before?”
ME: “Yes, back when it aired live in the year 2009.”
HER: “Why would you want to watch it again?”
ME: “For fun. It’s a great game.”
HER: “But you already know what happens. That doesn’t make any sense.”
ME: “You already know what happens in ‘Frozen II’ and you watch that over and over again.”
HER: “‘Frozen II’ is good.”
Later on, against my better judgement, I get her to watch the end of the game - the 12th inning. After gaslighting me about the whole “nine inning” thing again, she marches on through her usual interrogation.
HER: “How do you know the game is about to end?”
ME: “BECAUSE I’VE SEEN THE GAME! There’s going to be a big hit, and that player on second base is going to slide in at home plate and win.”
HER: “Why are they going to win? Don’t they have to play more extra innings?”
ME: “No it’s the bottom of the inning. If they score they win.”
HER: “Why are you watching it if you know they’re going to win?”
She sees the ending, and she watches the crowd at the Metrodome explode into excitement.
HER: “That’s not the stadium they normally play in.”
ME: “It’s their old stadium. They got the new one the next year. Target Field. The one you’ve been to.”
HER: “Why did they need a new one? That one seems fine.”
ME: “It was old and meant for football.”
HER: “That doesn’t make any sense. It looks like a baseball field.”
I’ve explained all of this before, and she’s only saying it again to drive me crazy. But she’s messing with me the way she always does when it comes to baseball season, and it reminded me of a normal spring. A normal baseball season. Normal feels good during this neverending quarantine.
HER: “So are the Twins happy because they won the World Series?”
ME: “No, this was just a game to see who would go to the playoffs. They lost in the next round.
HER: “To the Yankees?”
ME: “Go to your room.”