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by Linda Kittel
“Baseball is a family for those who follow it,” the game’s
eternal scribe, Roger Angell, wrote. And so it is for me. When my
husband Ron put me on the Greyhound bus for a 77-hour ride from our
home in Vermont to find us a new home in his native Idaho, he
advised me to talk to any of my seat companions about baseball.
“Everyone has something to say about baseball,” he told me. “Just
get them started and the miles will fly by.”
And Ron was right—still is most days. I discovered at the
Minneapolis/St. Paul bus station I had a new person in the seat
next to me—a priest, it turned out. And as he bowed his head before
a plastic-wrapped sandwich, I prayed too, prayed that he might have
something to say about the religion of baseball. Of course he did.
And as we crossed over the northern plains, he told me he was on
his way to Montana where his parish was and that he was the old
Orioles’ ace Dave McNally’s priest. The miles did fly by, full of
his kind recollections of seasons past, until we parted in
Butte.
Those two notions—baseball as family and “Everyone has something
to say about baseball”—led me to structure an honors composition
course at Washington State University around our national pastime.
Over the years I’ve found that every student does indeed have
something to say—and write—about baseball, from the guys who want
to let me know about their fantasy league teams to the young women
who wonder whether there will ever be women in the major
leagues.
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Former San Diego Padres pitcher Joe
McIntosh ’73 and his daughter Molly. Photo by Robert
Hubner
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