Edgy Mama

After witnessing the Asheville Tourists’ baseball manager act like a three-year-old yesterday (see below), I remembered another baseball-related story that I wanted relate.

My seven-year-old, as I’ve mentioned before, has a competitive spirit and has always been sports-obsessed. The most recent love of her life is baseball.

Every morning she is the first one up, and I know she’s awake when I hear the front door slam. The first thing she does daily, is run outside to get the newspaper. She brings it back in (slamming the door again), spreads it across our dining room table and devours the sports section.

By the time E-spouse, typically the second to crawl out of bed, makes it downstairs, she has a full report ready, including the previous night’s scores, her favorite teams’ standing, and the individual performance stats of some of her favorite players.

A few weeks ago, when we were at the beach, my girl made an amazing discovery. Baseball is televised.

She blames me for keeping her in the dark, so to speak. I don’t think I specifically hid the fact that baseball is often televised from her, nonetheless, now the occasional live minor league game supplemented with the sports page and Internet links to her favorite team home pages are NOT enough.

Tonight she had to go to a neighbor’s house to watch part of the Tarheels-Beavers World Championship Game (how unfortunate is it that a team is called the Beavers? I keep imagining the team cheers: Go Beavers! Whack those tails!).

But, hey, it’s social. She hangs with the neighbors. I keep my sanity. Tube time in the pnav remains limited. Although if the Braves or the Indians or the Red Sox go to the World Series, we’re either going to have to get cable for the month or move into the local sports bar.

Anyway, at the beach, my girl was allowed, through the intervention of grandma and great-aunt, also baseball fans, to watch a lot of ball.

E-spouse and I watched part of a Braves games with her. At one point, the pitcher hit the batter with the ball. Accidently, I’m sure. The batter was not happy, but the cameraman was thrilled to give us a close-up of the batter mouthing a rather nasty word to the pitcher.

“Did he just say what I think he said?” I asked.

“Yep. He said ‘MF,’” replied E-spouse, glancing at my girl.

Then she piped up: “He said ‘Memphis’?”

“That’s exactly what he said,” I answered.

Since then, “Memphis” has become one of my favorite curse words. Try it. Next time someone cuts you off in traffic or you slam your finger in a drawer, scream “Memphis!” at the top of your lungs. It’s cathartic.

I wonder if that’s one of the words Joe Mikulik was yelling at that umpire on Sunday.