Bogus Gold

I’m not normally a baseball guy. But I’ve been following the World Series because the White Sox are in it.

As I’ve mentioned about a dozen times in the past two weeks, my grandfather was a fanatic White Sox fan his whole life. When we were kids he used to tell stories about playing for the White Sox, which, as kids, we totally believed, even though all the adults around us seemed to find the stories terribly amusing. But his devotion to the Sox was no joke. He took my brother and me to White Sox games when we were kids at old Comisky Park (he also choked down the indignity of taking us to Cubs games without complaint, but that’s another story). He had always promised to take my grandmother to the World Series if the White Sox made it.

Grandfather didn’t live long enough to see it, but grandma did. Courtesy of my uncle Patrick, grandma attended last night’s game along with my mom & dad. I watched on the tube marveling at the fact that my 90 year old grandma was sitting outdoors for hours watching a game in weather like that: cold, wind, and rain the entire time.

I was happy to see grandma’s game play out as a true classic. The teams battled back and forth the entire night. The Astros scored first. The Sox answered back to take the lead in the same inning. Later the Astros took a two run lead. A White Sox grand slam pulled them ahead in the seventh. The Astros evened it up in the top of the ninth. And in the bottom of the ninth, a homerun won the game for the White Sox.

What a game! Somewhere my grandfather smiled. And in a cold, wet stadium in Chicago, so did grandma.