We have a rule at my house: A toddler can attend his first Chattanooga Lookouts baseball game once he can sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” This has been a problem for my younger son, who always tripped up on the line: “... So it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ballgame.” He loves the counting and arm pumping so much that he would get up to, like, 14, 15, 16 strikes.
“Time out,” I’d say. “There are only THREE strikes, son.”
Finally, after months of auditioning, my 2-year-old sang the whole song correctly late last month, and we bought tickets for the April 25 Lookouts game vs. Huntsville.
For several days, we passed AT&T Field on our morning commute to school and work, and I excitedly pointed out the location of Saturday’s “big ballgame.” I told him of the wonders inside AT&T Field: chocolate ice cream in helmet cups and big fuzzy guys named Slider and Looie.
“OK, Daddy,” he said.
On the night of the game, we arrived an hour early so we could ride the Lookouts trolley. I watched my 7-year-old son wrap his arm around his younger brother and point out to him the Tennessee Aquarium fountains and the horsedrawn carriages.
My mood shifted from euphoria to dread, though, as we approached the front gates of AT&T Field.
Umbrellas!
As we entered the gate, two young women handed us four fullsize Comcast umbrellas. I could see my 2-year-old literally start to salivate.
“Not good,” I thought.
For as long as I can remember, my younger son has been an umbrella freak. Sometimes he walks around the house endlessly, clutching an open umbrella and telling anyone who will listen, “It’s cold. It’s raining.” This drives his older brother insane, although his mother and I have come to think of it as an endearing little eccentricity.
Still, handing him an umbrella at a baseball game is like giving a machete to a baby monkey.
Before we could even settle into our seats, the boy had jettisoned the plastic sleeves from two umbrellas. Then, before I could disarm him, he nimbly pushed the spring-loaded button, sending the pointy end of an umbrella into an innocent bystander’s backside.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to wrestle the umbrella away from the baby.
“If you want to play with the umbrella, we have to go home,” I scolded.
“OK,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Without hesitation, he climbed into his stroller, deployed his umbrella and hunkered down for the long walk back to the car. Our trip to AT&T Field had lasted less than one inning.
As I pushed him up Fourth Street on a crystal clear evening,
a river of pedestrians parted like the Red Sea.
“I’m sorry, my baby is a little crazy,” I told anyone who made eye contact.
“It’s cold,” he said, shivering and holding the shaft of the umbrella with both hands. “It’s raining.”
Look on the bright side, I thought to myself. An imagination is a wonderful thing.
E-mail Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com
Kennedy is the content editor of the Times Free Press Life sections and writes the “Life Stories” column. Previously, he was the first Sunday editor of the Times Free Press. Before Chattanooga’s newspapers were merged in 1999, Kennedy was the coordinating editor of the Chattanooga Times, where he had previously been an education reporter, feature writer and team leader. His first newspaper job was as sports editor of the Cleveland (Tenn.) Daily Banner. Kennedy’s human ...
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