{"id":9588,"date":"2016-11-03T22:01:53","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T02:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9588"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:47:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:47:37","slug":"how-i-got-to-the-world-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=9588","title":{"rendered":"How I got to the World Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was always one of the last kids picked when we chose up sides for kickball. I was tall and I could run very fast, but I couldn’t kick and I couldn’t throw.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My sisters played baseball at home, but I only know this because of the family jokes about when Ann broke Maggie’s nose with a bat (accidentally, she claims).<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time I’d have been old enough to play, Ann was in college, Chris was a senior in high school and Maggie a freshman. In our rural neighborhood, there were no organized games, and the only nearby kid my age was Kevin, whom I remember as mean and silent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe Dad or Kevin or even Maggie offered to play catch, and I just wasn’t interested. <\/span><\/p>\n

I liked my books and I liked to wander through the woods. Once I learned to ride a bike I liked riding around for miles. <\/span><\/p>\n

I liked to go swimming at the local pool, and I learned to swim at the age of 6, but I never thought of that as anything athletic. I puzzled over the posted times for the swim team – could not picture a “butterfly” in the water, and “breast stroke” just seemed embarrassing. <\/span><\/p>\n

So team sports weren’t a priority. I endured those kickball games on the playground because I didn’t have a choice, but the humiliation turned me off to sports. Once you see yourself as uncoordinated, it’s very hard to shake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Title IX didn’t have any impact until I was in high school. I still have the button that says GIRLS COUNT TOO – Support girls sports – but by then the idea of participating in sports\u00a0was political, not personal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Phys ed was required in high school, so I put up with it. We sampled various forms of sport and exercise, but I didn’t like any of it, except for swimming.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had to learn agility in the back seats of cars.<\/span><\/p>\n

In college, I took fencing, ballet, and modern dance, hoping for gracefulness or confidence to transfer to my movements. I don’t think it\u00a0worked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At my first job, I had a boyfriend named Ed who was a baseball fanatic. There was nothing about the game that he didn’t know and love, and he was a Cleveland Indians fan.<\/span><\/p>\n

I went to baseball games because Ed loved baseball and I loved Ed. I thought baseball was boring, at first, but he taught me to keep score.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Keeping score revealed the inner workings of the game. Strategy became transparent. I began to predict what the next pitch would be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was part of the game at last.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be continued….<\/em><\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 1982, the year I saw my first Indians game.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Featured image Creative Commons Zero license via Pixabay<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was always one of the last kids picked when we chose up sides for kickball. I was tall and I could run very fast, but I couldn’t kick and I couldn’t throw.\u00a0 My sisters played baseball at home, but I only know this because of the family jokes about when Ann broke Maggie’s nose … read more How I got to the World Series<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[344,1328,1327,1103,1230],"class_list":["post-9588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-344","tag-athletics","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9588"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9794,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9588\/revisions\/9794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}