I spent the afternoon with a bunch of baseball buddies. We are all New York Mets fans. This group has been together for almost 35 years—I joined maybe 32 years ago.
It started as the fan group for Project Scoresheet, which was the brainchild of baseball historian Bill James. He had created a way to score games that could easily be input into the computer; with groups of 15-20 fans for each team scoring using his scoresheets (we were paid $10 a game) and faxing the completed sheet within 24 hours to a central location, he thought he could then sell the accumulated information to Major League Baseball. For whatever reason, his plan did not work out, but the Elias Sports Bureau refined the idea—and if you’re a baseball fan, you may have heard that name.
Each fan group of James’s Project had a captain who gathered the group together each March, originally to parcel out which members were responsible for which games during the season. The Mets group’s captain was Dave G., a natural networker, who, after Project Scoresheet was shut down, continued to gather us every March to discuss the previous season, opine on the season to come—and play baseball trivia.
Except
for a couple of sessions, I’ve been the only woman in the group. The younger
men seemed fine with that, but initially I felt some coolness from the men
close to my age—did they think that I, a female, was intruding on their space? Some years in, I discovered accidentally that one of them belonged to my
sister’s church and his wife was one of my sister’s friends. Plus, I hung in
there and didn’t always suck at the trivia game. So now I have been accepted.
Today we met at a sports bar in Stamford, Conn. (everyone but me lives in Connecticut). There were a total of 23 TV screens in the bar, some immense, some very large, some home size. Most screens were showing the NCAA basketball tournament, women’s game on the screen nearest our table, men’s game on the largest screen over the bar. When the UNC/Baylor game tied and went into overtime, the room roared when one side or the other went ahead. (UNC finally won.)
But our table stuck to baseball, at my end discussing why we hated the designated hitter that has now been imposed on the National League. (Well, accepted by the players in their new labor contract.) But as the noise level increased, it made playing trivia nearly impossible. When our game host read a question, he often had to repeat it as the turn passed from one person to the next—there were ten of us at a long table. I used to keep track of the questions and answers so I could try to remember for the next time, but today I couldn’t remember anything because I could barely hear. I didn’t get a single answer right, though I would have gotten two if I’d trusted my instincts—maybe the noise weakened my confidence.
Before we left for the day, we each predicted how many games we thought the Mets would win this season, ranging from 83 to 93. I hope we can get together at an actual Mets game this summer to see one of those wins.
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I’m participating in the 15th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 19 of the 31-day challenge. It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about. Join in!
