Opening Day

I’m a huge baseball fan.  I grew up in a baseball family.  I’ve been a fan my whole life, but a major fan since we moved to Denver and had access to the Rockies.

Friday was Opening Day, or as we sometimes call it “amateur day.”  On Opening Day you will hear things such as “Come on, Ref!” * and “How many points do we have?”**  I once was hit on by a guy in the beer line, and he was telling me that someone had just hit a homerun.  I asked who hit it and he said, “I don’t know, I think it was our DH.”  I looked at him, with my head cocked to the side and said, “This is the National League.”***  He didn’t get why I was so uninterested in him.  So I understand more about baseball than the average girl, but I will admit that there are things that I just don’t get.  Like a balk.  Or the infield fly rule. 

Sawan and I on Opening Day 2009

Sawan and I always called Opening Day “Christmas.”  It was a holiday in our house.  We even got to get a gift every year: one item of Rockies attire.  So even though I look forward to Opening Day, it’s also a day that I dread.  It’s part of the dichotomy of being a widow.  I miss him so much that day.

I struggle, too, with the psychosis of wondering if this is really my life.  I have this running clock in my head of where we would be were he still alive.  Kind of like the Gwyneth Paltrow movie “Sliding Doors.”  Like the other Noel is still living her life, and Sawan’s still alive, and we have a baby now, and this was his first Opening Day, and we had him all decked out in Rockies duds and his dad was carrying him.  I try not give in to these thoughts, but it’s so hard not to, and I grieve every time I see a dad with a baby.

So that’s it.  I’m so excited that baseball season is here, and also so scared.  Last year I had an amazing March, it was the first time that I started to feel slightly like myself again.  People began to tell me, “I can see the light returning to your eyes.”  And then baseball started and I just got really sad again.  So I’m scared, too.  I’m trying to be brave, to just enjoy it, because I loved baseball before I loved Sawan, but it just makes me miss him so badly.

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Opening Day 2011 with Ellie

*In baseball, it’s an Umpire.

**The score is kept in runs, not points.

***The American League has a designated hitter (DH) that hits in place of the pitcher, but no such position exists in the National League.  A pinch hitter can be put in for the pitcher once he is going to be taken out of the game, and that’s who I believe hit the home run that day….