October 25 - Where Are They Now? Wednesday - Grandma

This week’s WHERE ARE THEY NOW? WEDNESDAY is my Grandma, who died on August 11, 2004. Sure the easy answer is, she’s in the ground. But the better answer, and correct one, is that she live on. Let me explain.

After her husband died in 1969, she relocated to a trailer park. Back then, trailer parks did not have the bad connotation they do today, thanks Jerry Springer. I would mow her yard along with many of her neighbors. It was during these summers I became her Favorite Grandson. There might have been other contenders, or pretenders, but Grandma and I shared a common love.

It might have been the root beer floats, or the enjoyment of a competitive game of double solitaire, but it wasn’t. It was our mutual love of baseball.

Tonight, as I watch the World Series, I remember who it was that got me interested in the World Series, and baseball in general. Sure, I played baseball as a youth, but watching baseball was not a real option.

Back in the early 70’s there were not any “sports channels” or “super stations.” In fact, there was only one game on TV per week, the NBC Game of the Week. The one game was each Saturday at 1 p.m. and this only happened 25 times a season. However, every playoff game and World Series Game was televised. Better yet, they were all day games.

It was during the 1970 World Series that my Grandma taught me how to keep score. She had been keeping score of every World Series game since before I was born. She kept the scorecards in notebooks for years.

My favorite moments have my Grandma and I sitting on the couch and chair respectively, with our notebooks on the TV trays, as we watched and scored the game. I remember the great announcers like Tony Kubek, Curt Gowdy, and Joe Garagiola. Her scoring style was not as precise as the official scorekeeping standards of the day, but they worked for her and me.

After my mom died in 1997, they found some of my old scorebooks. One of the games is illustrated below. It was Game 5 of the 1972 NL Championship Series between Pittsburgh and my Cincinnati Reds. The Reds prevailed in the bottom of the ninth to advance to the World Series against the Oakland A’s.

The actual box score (link) can be compared to the scoring of an avid ten-year old fan.

Coincidently, on the outside of the now 34 year-old scorebook, is a 2-inch by 6-inch, “VOTE REPUBLICAN” sticker. I was an active 4th grader in the re-elect Richard Nixon campaign. I was very energetic in distributing campaign stickers to my classmates until Sister Celsius found out.

I have since passed the scoring enjoyment onto my first son and will pass it on to my second son in time. My then 12 year-old son, Zachary (far right), is scoring a game in 2001 from the Red’s press box at the old Riverfront (Cinergy) Stadium.

Sure it seemed easy to identify the location of a deceased person for my WHERE ARE THEY NOW? WEDNESDAY. But they real answer is that she lives on. She’s in my thoughts every time I watch, I coach, or I play a baseball game. Thank You Grandma.

Below is a 1992 picture of Grandma and her Favorite Grandson.