by Peggy Rowe
When someone asks me what my mother was like, I tell them the truth. I had two mothers—both residing in one body. Mother #1 played contract bridge, listened to opera, and had season tickets to the Baltimore Symphony. She would rather part with her spleen than leave the house in jeans or chew gum in public. Mother #2 was a crazed baseball groupie who shouted obscenities at umpires and threw her underwear at the opposing team. I remember the exact moment she came into my life.
I dropped my schoolbooks on a kitchen chair and sniffed the air for the usual breakfast aromas: scrapple, pancakes, stewed apples. “Good old Southern cooking,” Dad called it.
But instead of bending over the stove, my mother was bent over the sports section of the morning paper.
“What’s for breakfast, Mom?”
Without looking up, she pointed to a box of Corn Flakes on the counter. That’s when I saw the orange-and-black chart taped to the refrigerator door.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“An Orioles game schedule. Always consult it before you make plans involving me.”
“So . . . I don’t have to go to the dentist on Thursday?”
“I changed your appointment to Monday. The Orioles don’t play on Mondays.”
“Hmm . . . looks like I don’t have to go to church on Sunday.”
Again, without looking up: “Read the schedule, Peggy. Sunday games are in the afternoon.”
And that’s how it was in 1954. By the time the St. Louis Browns became The Baltimore Orioles, I was in my teens. Just as the colorful stained-glass window was the focal point in our church, the colorful schedule taped to the refrigerator door became the focal point in our home. It didn’t help to complain.
“Dad, baseball is controlling our lives! Look, it’s five o’clock! Mom hasn’t even started supper yet, and I’m supposed to go riding in a half hour.”
“Well, maybe you’d like to cook something,” Dad said.
“I asked her what I should fix,” I replied. “She just shushed me and said, ‘extra innings.’ What are you going to do about it, Dad?”
“Just be patient, hon. The season only lasts until September. Then things will get back to normal. You’ll see.”
The following evening, my old dog, Topper, and I were lounging on the living room floor watching our only TV and eating popcorn when Mom came breezing in with her sewing basket and changed the channel.
“Hey, that was I Love Lucy!”
“Whining is unbecoming a young lady,” Mother #1 said. “I’m sorry, but the game’s more important.”
“Will it be over in an hour? Because Gunsmoke comes on, and I can’t miss that!”
“Come on. Watch it with me. Not all the games are televised, you know.”
During one of the commercials, I changed the channel briefly, and you’d have thought I had jumped up and swung from our treasured crystal chandelier. God forbid we should miss a pitch!
My mother had never shown any interest in sports. I could have understood her obsession if there was a void in her life, but her days were filled running Dad’s business, running our church, and running our house—not to mention her busy social schedule.
Not that Orioles games weren’t fun. They were, in fact, great family entertainment. Mom was a multitasker long before the term came into vogue. The appearance of the ironing board and laundry basket in the living room signaled more than an imminent ballgame. It was the promise of drama and excitement to rival a three-ring circus. And I had a front row seat!
“Take the pitcher out, Paul! He doesn’t have it today. For Pete’s sake, what are you waiting for? He’s given up three walks and two hits!” Mom screamed, flailing her arms and kicking her legs in the air like a child having a temper tantrum.
“Why are you closing the curtains, Peggy? It’s the middle of the day,” she’d say.
“Somebody might walk past the window.”
“We live in the country, for Pete’s sake. I doubt that the horses and rabbits and squirrels are interested in baseball.”
Umpires were the enemy. “Get your eyes examined!” she’d yell. “He was safe by a mile!” Then in her very next breath, Mother #1 would reappear. “Peggy, stop slouching. Sit up like a lady.”
Once, early on, before he became accustomed to the erratic Orioles fan, Topper was asleep beneath the coffee table at game time. When the Os led off with a home run, Mom squealed like a hyena and Topper shot into the air, hit his head on the table, and knocked himself out cold. “He’s just a little groggy,” Mom said. “Put a cool, damp towel on his forehead—he’ll be himself in no time.” After that day, the old whippet was on alert from the minute the ironing board creaked open. Furious barking accompanied Mom’s angry shouts at the opposing team and the umps. When things were going especially well for the Os, my “dignified” mother cheered and pranced around the room like the grand marshal in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. At such times, Topper, his arthritis forgotten, bounded blissfully into the air like a Lipizzaner stallion performing a capriole, his good ear standing tall and his tail waving like the flags atop Memorial Stadium during an Orioles game.
I could only imagine what a stranger coming upon the scene might think as I locked the doors.
Once when I came into the living room from the barn, Orioles’ manager Paul Richards was being ejected for going nose-to-nose with a plate umpire who was blind as a bat, according to Mom.
Furious, she reached down into her laundry basket, balled up several pairs of her underpants, and hurled them at the TV screen in protest.
That evening, I took my father aside. “Dad, you need to have a talk with Mom. She’s acting like a teenager at a rock concert.”
“Oh, hon, she’s not all that bad,” he said, laughing.
“She threw her underpants at the television!”
“She what?”
“Well, from the laundry basket. But still—what if we had company?” My father had an expression for people who weren’t quite normal: “That person is just a half-bubble off,” he would say, referring to his tool, the level. I thought he would use it now, but instead he invited me to join him outside for a walk where he came as close as he ever had to admonishing me.
“Your mother has an obsession. You should be able to understand that.” He tilted his head toward the stable.
He was referring to my interest in horses, of course. A passion I’d been born with.
“Yeah, but I don’t act all weird and embarrass anybody.”
Dad shrugged. “How many teenage girls do you know who spend their time shoveling horse manure and galloping through the woods bareback? Some people might think a slumber party in a stable with two horses, a dog, and a chicken is weird.”
He had a point. I thought back a couple of nights earlier to when Topper had killed a rat in the tack room, and I carried it by its long tail through the moonlight to the stream. My girlfriends would have shrieked.
“But it’s what you love, so it’s okay with your mother and me if you want to live in dungarees and smell like a horse. Be patient, hon. Who knows? Maybe we’ll learn to love baseball too.”
As an afterthought, he added, “And Mom is always at ringside for your horse shows—even when there’s a ballgame.” I didn’t remind him that she had a transistor radio to her ear and cheered loudly at inappropriate times, spooking the horses. But Dad was right. Mom had always tried to be tolerant of my obsession.
“I’ll try to be patient,” I promised, thinking back to my parents’ breakfast conversation that very morning:
Dad: “What time did you finally come to bed, hon? I didn’t hear you.”
Mom: “It was after midnight. We’re on the West Coast this week. You should have seen Clint Courtney. Base runners should know better than to steal with him behind the plate! There was a big rhubarb, and he almost got ejected.”
Dad: “I guess that’s why they call him Scrap Iron.” He loved it when Mom smiled.
Mom: “And he’s batting 270. That’s not bad.
We’re in seventh place this morning behind the Washington Senators.”
There were only eight teams in our division, but Dad knew better than to intrude on her maniacal sense of optimism. When Mom talked about the grace with which Willie Miranda turned ground balls into outs, or the Bible that manager Paul Richards kept on his office desk, Dad seemed as captivated as when I talked about the new trick I had taught my horse.
Sometimes Dad and I joined Mom for a televised game. Alongside my mother and Topper, we looked like we were drugged. I always checked the schedule on the refrigerator door before inviting friends over.
The first time I saw Mom do her voodoo thing, I was worried we’d have to have her committed. The Os were trailing the White Sox 4–3 in the top of the ninth. We had the bases loaded with two out.
She was standing two feet from the television holding out her left hand. I thought her palm itched because she was rubbing little circles with the fingers of her right hand. Then she closed her eyes, tilted her head heavenward, and began chanting.
We weren’t the kind of family that chants. We weren’t monks; we were Presbyterians. We didn’t speak in tongues or wave our arms about, or shout, “Praise the Lord!”
“Mom, what are you doing? You’re scaring me.”
“Oh, relax! I’m just putting the Double Whammy on their pitcher. We need base runners.” She explained that the little circles represented Orioles rounding the bases.
“Come on, help me! There’s strength in numbers.”
It was a bunch of mumbo jumbo, and I feared that she was “a full-bubble off.” Later she giggled like it was all a big joke, but I knew better.
You can keep a passion like my mother’s behind closed curtains for only so long. I was fifteen when the “crazy aunt” came down from the attic—and went public.
Mealtime had always been sacred in our home: no television, no radio, no telephone calls. And God help the person who brought a book or magazine to the table. It was a time for conversation—especially before my sister left for college. But since the Orioles came to town, sports radio blared in the background during dinner, and it was “Bob Turley this, Billy Hunter that.” Halfway through the meal, Mom would jump from her seat like catcher Clint Courtney springing from a crouch to cut down a runner stealing second and call the station to talk strategy and spout statistics. When her ideas were taken seriously, Dad beamed the way he did when I won a ribbon at a horse show.
Once she answered a difficult trivia question and won a trophy in the form of a unique, smoky-gray glass dish with the Orioles team roster printed in gold. It was displayed on the coffee table until the day my uncle used it to crush out his Camel cigarette. Then it went to live in the china cabinet.
One evening at the beginning of the Orioles second season, the phone rang just as we finished dinner. Mom and I listened as Dad spoke to his friend George whose loud voice carried across the room. George’s company, it seemed, owned a coveted open box at Memorial Stadium, home of the Orioles.
“Sometimes we have extra tickets to afternoon games,” he said. “Do you think you and Thelma would be interested? I know she’s a big fan. Our box is directly behind home plate, and the tickets are free.”
Fortunately, Topper was not asleep under the coffee table at the time as my mother’s scream was heard by the neighbors on the next farm.
Being in business for himself, Dad arranged to take Mom to the first game. Before I left for school that morning, he winked at me.
“Your mother’s walking in tall cotton,” he said. In truth, he seemed as excited as Mom, who, for the first time ever, forgot to pack my lunch, check my outfit, and tell me goodbye. At dinner that evening, she was bubbly with details of an Orioles win, while Dad wore his ever-so-patient expression. Two weeks later, he took Mom to a second afternoon game but after that was suddenly too busy with work.
Poor Dad. Seeing my mother dancing in the stands like a showgirl was probably too much for him. And that’s when my life took a dark turn.
“I have a surprise. You and I are going to an Orioles game tomorrow afternoon!” Mom exclaimed.
“Sorry, Mom, but I still go to school, remember?”
“This is a special occasion. I’ll write a note and pick you up at lunchtime!”
I thought back a couple of weeks when I had asked to skip school in order to prepare for a horse show. You’d have thought I had asked to dye my hair purple. I had to listen to a long lecture on the importance of education.
“You mean . . . watch a baseball game . . . in public?”
“Come on. It’ll be fun! I’ll buy you a hotdog with everything on it.”
And so began the longest summer of my teenage years. That very night I dreamed my mother removed her underpants in front of thousands and threw them at the umpire. As we were escorted from the ballpark with my friends watching, our names were announced over the loud speakers. Of course, that didn’t really happen. Oh no. What actually happened was worse.
On the drive to Memorial Stadium, Mom’s knuckles were white against the steering wheel.
“Did I tell you we’re playing the Yankees today?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“They’re in first place. Don Johnson is pitching for us. He’s a righty. Used to be a Yankee so you know he wants a win.”
“Mom, you’re on the sidewalk!” I said, leaning to my left. “Did you feel that bump? That was the curb! Mom, we’re going to end up in a ditch!”
If she was this excited on the way there, I could only imagine how she’d be when we got there. It was like a death march, and the prospect of ending up in a ditch was strangely appealing.
“Gus Triandos is catching today. Sometimes he plays first base. Gus and Don are both big men—six-foot-three.”
My attention was drawn to a colorful sign on the side of a building advertising a rodeo at the armory. It featured a trick rider my age. I’d seen a television ad for the rodeo and had been practicing one of her routines on my horse. As Mom prattled on, I closed my eyes and pretended we were on our way to the rodeo right now, instead of. . . .
“Here we are,” she said, turning into the stadium parking lot. As we made our way across the blacktop on 33rd Street, she stared at the imposing brick façade. In that very moment, her expression changed, and she looked as if she were about to enter some revered holy place—a cathedral, perhaps. Had we been Catholic, I might have likened her face to St. Bernadette’s upon seeing the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. I had probably worried needlessly.
Several strangers were already in the back row of our box as we took our seats at the front.
“Isn’t this a beautiful ballpark? Have you ever seen greener grass?” Mom asked, her eyes sparkling like sunlight on the stream that flowed beside our orchard. I was thinking what a nice pasture it would make when she squeezed my arm and pointed ahead.
“Look! The Yankees are taking batting practice and jogging around the outfield.” Then she leaned closer and whispered confidentially, “These are the most expensive seats in the ballpark; we won’t get hit by foul balls.” She pointed to the large, net-like screen behind home plate.
And the umpires won’t get hit by flying underwear, I thought as vendors in the aisles shouted, “Get your peanuts! Popcorn! Soda!”
Our box gradually filled—a dozen or so seats—while the odor of cigar smoke wafted over us.
“Hello, Thelma,” called George and his wife, Alice.
I turned and waved, and when they asked, “Peggy, are you still riding horses?” I nodded and smiled. I had babysat their three children a couple of times, a job I’d inherited when my sister left for college.
It was soon evident that I had left Mother #1 at the stadium entrance, the way cowboys in the Old West left their six-shooters at the church door.
Laughing at the whacky Orioles fan in our living room was one thing—sitting beside a mother who howled like a coyote when the Orioles got a run was something else. There were no curtains to draw when she screa
med, “Get your eyes examined! He was safe by a mile!”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said when my mother stood up and did a hula dance.
“Are you okay? You just went to the bathroom.”
Minutes later I returned to find a hot dog with everything on it. As promised, it was spectacular! My mother, though, was too excited to eat.
I wasn’t prepared for the physical pain that came at the top of the fifth inning after lunch. When third baseman Wayne Causey and catcher Gus Triandos had a Yankee in a rundown between third and home, Mom reached over and squeezed my thigh so hard she broke a blood vessel. Before I could say, “Ouch!” Gus tagged him out at the plate, and she pulled me to my feet, wrapped her arms around me, and jumped up and down as though we were sharing a pogo stick.
“Mom! People are staring! Mom, I just ate a hotdog with everything on it, remember!”
She was completely oblivious to the shouts of “Down in front!” The family lunatic was out of the closet for sure, and I envisioned the end of my babysitting career.
And then came the bottom of the eighth when we were a run behind with two men on—and Mom suddenly extended the dreaded left hand, palm side up.
“Come on, Peggy! We need some runs! It’s time for The Double Whammy!”
To a teenager, she may as well have been sacrificing a goat to the home run gods right there in the stands, and I didn’t want to be around when the men in white coats dragged her away. So I cringed and hightailed it. When I reached the lower concourse, I heard Mom’s voice floating above the crowd.
“Just hit the damn ball!”
Of course, I lacked the maturity to appreciate my mother’s unbridled passion for the Orioles, but I did learn something that summer—besides the fact that sitting next to her required protective gear.
I was the only person embarrassed by my mother’s antics. By September, the others in our box were joining in when she danced and cheered.