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| Satsuma ball, waiting in my Florida garden for a Cardinals' victory so it can finally ripen |
An interesting conversation with a friend the other day revealed that baseball fan (at least male fan) habits are universally similar. The friend recalled that her male relatives (all Cardinals' baseball fans) used to watch the World Series of baseball as a matter of ritual, gathering together in each other's home for every game, visually glued to the TV set (now quite small by today's mega-size standards), while simultaneously listening to the play-by-play radio broadcast. Now these are dedicated fans, I thought, raised on
Jack Buck's voice, not quite trusting what they saw on those television screens, and needing something more emphatic, something with verve. But wait! What's missing from their sensory-rich experience? They're watching, listening, and (if I know anything about males, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this one), nervously gripping some kind of ball. Of course, I'm talking
cheese here. You know, the kind that baseball wives dutifully serve with crackers or crusty bread. Anyway, the missing sensory elements in this Blast-from-the-Past baseball series could only be...Yes, the smell of baseball. You've already got the taste of cheese in your mouth. Now focus on the smell. It's sweat, covered by after-shave and perfume, covered by popcorn, covered by peanuts, covered by beer, covered by hot dogs, covered by puke, covered by....unwashed, left-in-the-locker-too-long Red Sox. So now consider them all washed up for this year. Go, win this 2013 World Series,
Cardinals!
