My wife is working today in Chicago, so I’m doing my retirement thing here in “My Kind of Town.”  The nice thing about retirement is that it can be done from anywhere.  She did seem a bit jealous this morning, as she went one direction to make calls and I went the other for a Diet Coke.  However, I think that today will be considerably easier on her than the past few days of tending to the demands of her 95-year-old mother:  errands, closet cleaning, bank duties, dining, cemetery, wheelchair pushing, and the frustrating efforts to communicate.  We’re both glad to be away from the assisted-living environment that doesn’t exactly exude positive vibes.

Technically, it’s “Date Night,” so she’ll have yet another reason to want to get back home as soon as possible.  We’re going to a White Sox game tonight and  she’d undoubtedly rather “set her hair on fire” than watch baseball and eat hot-dogs.  Only I am looking forward to Date Night this week!  If she had her way, we’d probably be paying top dollar to see Hamilton, or at least go back to Joe’s Stone Crab for seafood and Sancerre.  That’s where we started this journey a few days ago to bring us back home to Indiana.  We did stop by to see the frozen-tongue of Flick stuck to the flagpole from the Christmas Story at the Indiana Welcome Center next door to our hotel.  It’s often the main highlight of these quarterly trips back to visit, if that gives you any idea of the level of excitement sometimes associated with this treks to the Hoosier State.   We’re in a different hotel room every night, up early every morning, and sluggish from our daily intake of fast food.  Not to mention, exhausted from long flights, traffic hassles associated with hours in a rental car, and conversations with her nearly deaf mother, often written on a dry-erase board.  I’m proud to say though that we had no major disagreements, other than where to turn.

My mother-in-law is a big sports fan, although apparently this wasn’t always the case.  It certainly didn’t rub off on her daughters!  We did take her parents to their very first Cubs game at Wrigley Field nearly 18 years ago.  Mark Grace was her favorite player at that time.  It’s probably because of her hearing issues that sports became the focal point of her television viewing after my father-in-law passed away.  She could easily follow games without dealing with closed captioning, and always tuned-in for Cubs games   It’s become a common bond between the two of us, and gives my wife a break during our visits.  We watched them play the Nationals the last couple nights, bemoaning their sluggish first half of the season.   We also were at Wrigley Field for last year’s World Series games 4 and 5, and watched game six from Cleveland with her at the assisted living home.  Honestly, if the Cubs were in town tonight we would have undoubtedly gone to Wrigley Field rather than Guaranteed Rate where the White Sox play.  However, since the Sox are playing the Yankees, the game will definitely bring back many memories. (See post #148: Summer baseball)

I haven’t seen the Yankees play in Chicago since 1960 when my dad took me to a game at original Comiskey Park.  I had just become a fan of the White Sox and their catcher, #10 Sherm Lollar, most likely because they had played in the World Series the previous year.  My had dad actually talked me out of being a Yankees fan that previous year in favor of a team closer to our Indiana home.  He hated the Yankees, but didn’t exactly have the White Sox in mind as my team of choice.  He was a Tigers and Cubs fan, and was hoping that I would follow suit.  Because of his efforts, I was a frustrated baseball fan for 46 years until the White Sox finally won it all.  I could have been an obnoxious Yankee fan, like so many others I’ve known through the years!

Original Comiskey Park and its exploding scoreboard named “The Monster” was right next door to where they built the new Comiskey Park – U.S. Cellular Field .  Just last year it was re-named Guaranteed Rate Field.  My White Sox finally won the World Series in 2005 in the new Comiskey Park, and I had the pleasure of attending a couple of those games. It was the last time I saw a game played there, even though we drive by it all the time on our route to and from Indiana.  Unfortunately, during the last dozen years, the team has been consistently “down,” and many White Sox fans, like myself,  are concerned about the Guaranteed Rate association with the stadium and their logo that consists of a giant red, downward pointed arrow.  Don’t  rub it in!

I return to the field tonight, after 12 years of enjoying season tickets with the Cubs, while struggling to maintain my childhood loyalty to the White Sox.  I’ve attended a couple of “Crosstown Classic” rivalry games at Wrigley in the meantime, so I didn’t totally forget about my allegance.  I’ve also worn my White Sox jersey to a several Mariner’s games up in Seattle, since moving to nearby Portland.  I’ve been to Yankee Stadiums, old and new, several times in the last few decades.  In fact, my wife and I went to see the Yankees and Cleveland play in 1999 in original Yankee Stadium.  We were just dating at the time, so we both made compromises.  Instead of hot dogs we tried Dippin’ Dots for the first time, and between innings some guy told us to “get a room.”   Six years later, as a married couple, we made a second compromise and went to see a Civic Theater presentation of “Damn Yankees,” with a show-stopping performance by the one-and-only Jerry Lewis.  That was probably the best trade-off we ever made between her love of Theater and mine of Baseball.

Ironically. before we started dating, my wife had access to tickets through one of her suppliers, and got me seats to take my ex-father-in-law to a Yankees game in Tampa at Tropicana in 1998.  He was one of those obnoxious Yankee fans, that I could have been just like if it weren’t for my dad.  I saw those “Damn Yankees” beat the Red Sox in 2009 at new Yankee stadium, and repeat the feat against the Rays in 2004 at the old stadium.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever watched them lose.  Hopefully, tonight will be the first time they go down in flames, and that my wife won’t set her hair on fire, instead of enjoying the game!