A Softball Game

There wasn’t really a good reason to go to the Aggie softball game against Tech except to prove to my Aggie sons that their father is a true Aggie t-shirt fan. I happened to have two hours to spare on my otherwise busy Saturday, so to the game I went.

I didn’t wear my favorite aggie apparel to avoid putting extra attention on myself, and it turned out to be a good thing. The ticket taker didn’t accept debit cards and I was out of cash, but assuming that I was a Red Raider, the lady let me get in for free. That wouldn’t have happened had I been wearing Tech’s hated Aggie maroon.

While I was walking toward the field, I was pleasantly surprised to run into Carl, Justin and John’s beloved father, who was walking to his car to get a hat. It was almost like running into your old friend in a strange land, which is considered by Chinese people as one of the four happiest things in life (他鄉遇故知.) I sat with Carl and Jana for about an hour, talking mostly about our boys.

The game itself was quite innocent, reminding me a lot of little league baseball games. The dimensions of the field are about the same and the small crowd was quite passionate. I guess a lot of the people in the stands were related the players one way or another so their cheers were loud and personal. The players were mostly adults, but there was still an air of innocence about them, which was breath of fresh air compared to other sports.

“They just can’t help cheering,” Carl said to me, seeming to be amused by the cheering moves our girls were making.

“Well, they are girls,” I responded, but felt a little uneasy about what I had said. Certainly I am no sexist, I tried to assure myself.

Carl told me some other things about his boys, which I am not free to share. We were just a couple of proud fathers, sitting in the stands watching our little boys perform, who couldn’t keep ourselves from cheering for every little move that our boys made, even though they weren’t playing. We were watching the game, applauding occasionally out of politeness, but we were more interested in our boys who had quit playing ball years ago, and would have been embarrassed had they realized we were still rooting boisterously for them. “Good eye, son! O sorry, girl,” we bellowed out after Megan May held back her swing. She struck out.

By the way, the Aggie girls won the game, which didn’t really matter that much to us. We had other concerns.