Baseball Ode to Marty Party

Baseball … Love … Die-hards … Mom

My mom, younger brother and I hanging out with Brian Snitker and his family at Starmont Pool in Danville, Va. Snitker served as the D-Braves’ manager for one season and is currently in his second year as manager of the Atlanta Braves. Notice mom, perm, glasses, white shirt, giving me bunny ears. Told you guys I had an over-shaped, egg-size head.

During the summer of 1993 with “Jurassic Park” making sure no dinosaur-cloning entrepreneur would ever get a loan and Joe Carter giving people a reason to watch Canadian baseball, the Atlanta Braves moved their Advanced Rookie-level affiliate, the Pulaski Braves, to Danville and the Pulaski Braves became the Danville Braves.

My parents have always been die-hard Braves fans so it only made sense they purchased regular-season tickets that first summer and the following 26.

Midway through the Danville Otterbots’ season-series finale against Kingsport last week, the seemingly impossible combination of my lower back hurting and butt going comfortably numb forced me into taking a walk during the seventh inning stretch.

As I walked around Dan Daniel Park, a deluge of memories from my near 30 years spent at the park ran through my mind. I got to thinking about my first kiss in the third base bleachers. Learning clever quips to throw at the umpires. Hearing my guy Ed Shealy yell, “Hit it over the chicken cow.” However, most of the memories had to do with the star of the show: Marty “Party” Wilson.

You’d be hard pressed to find another person that loved baseball as much as my mom. Actually, she probably loved staring at the ballplayers’ butts more, but she loved going every summer. I always used to tease her that if she wasn’t married to my dad, my brother and I would’ve had hundreds of Latino uncles during the summer as she used her Spanish-speaking skills to flirt with Andruw Jones, Rafael Furcal, Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna to name a few.

I performed as the D-Braves mascot Blooper one summer and I never will forget how much she loved me sticking her head into the mouth of the costume and acting like I was going to bite it off. Or how much fun she had when I danced with her in costume or sat behind her and tapped her on the shoulder only to turn away when she looked back. Most importantly, I’ll never forget how proud she was of me even though I was in my mid-20s and should’ve been working a career job instead of barely making minimum wage performing as a green chicken.

I also got to thinking about her and the late John Fesperman and how they used to tease each other unmercifully. To the point people probably thought they hated each other and were going to break out in some “Jerry Springer, you better keep your hands off my baby daddy” fighting action. I also remember her pimping me out to her friends’ granddaughters trying to help me get over my first breakup. And her singing along with “Sweet Caroline” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and thinking, “Damn, she’s the only one in the family that can sing.”

I got to thinking about how she would stand at the fence on her tippy-toes, her short, T-Rex arms barely dangling over, and get us autographs. And the time she sweet talked future Major League and World Series champion Jermaine Dye into giving my brother his sweaty cleats after a ballgame.

Most of all, there was her spirit. Her huge heart. Her generosity. Her way with people. Her charisma. She never met a stranger. And how it led to her forming a friendship with current Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker and his family, which led me to writing one of the most braggadocious/humblebrag columns in the world after the Braves won their first World Series title in 26 years this past fall.

Of course, I have memories of mom that have nothing to do with the Braves or baseball. I’ll never forget the time she took my brother and me to see Puff Daddy and The Family’s “No Way Out” tour and joined Lil’ Kim in a particularly explicit chant. All the puns we dropped on her after she walked into a glass door in St. Louis with an example being, “Mom, you really busted through the glass door on that one.” A joke that led to her not speaking to us for the rest of the week. The way she would make up cuss words like “shit ass” when she got really mad at us.

The time she caught a mean buzz after stress smoking one of my Newport’s a few days before I moved to Myrtle Beach. Or the time she called me a broke pimp after one of my best friends told her I was a pimp. And even though I wasn’t alive yet, I’ll never forget the story of her accidentally lighting her hair on fire after getting too close to a science experiment her friends were conducting.

Or the time she called me from Las Vegas and convincingly pretended she was drunk and had gotten a tattoo on her lower back.

My mom taught at O.T. Bonner at the same time I was attending the school and I never will forget her telling me to look at people and say, “You don’t know anything, try living with her,” when they came up and talked smack about her to me. I can’t tell you how many friends I made with that comeback.

My mom gave up her personality, generosity, zaniness and ghost a little over a week ago after losing her near seven-year fight with dementia.

Whether it was the Atlanta or Danville Braves, my mom was the best kind of person: A die-hard sports fan. Drew Barrymore perhaps said it best in the movie “Fever Pitch” when she told her Red Sox obsessed boyfriend Jimmy Fallon that he had a lyrical soul, that he could love under the best and worst of conditions. That’s the best way to describe a die-hard fan not only when it comes to sports, but in life as well.

My mom was just like Fallon’s character. She never gave up on either one of her Braves. I, on the other hand, threw my Braves hat in the trash, swore them off forever, wished every single player would get bitten by a tick and get the Alpha-gal allergy and questioned my religious beliefs after the mid-September collapse in 2011. Not my mom, though. She just smiled and told me to keep the faith.

Marty “Party” was the same way with us. She always loved us. Never stopped caring for us. Never stopped fighting for us. I will never forget her calling one of my teammates a little “shit ass” after he yelled at me during an indoor soccer game. I never will forget the time she went gospel gangster on my JV soccer coach. Or the number of times she kept me from getting kicked out of the house faster than Randy Johnson can throw a football.

That’s what die-hard fans do, though. They love through the thick and thin. For better and worse. Until death do them part. They never give up on those or what they love no matter how many ground balls they let go through their legs, base-running mistakes they make or painfully creative ways they find to lose.

How many non-die-hard sports fans can understand this? How many people get their hearts broken and swear off or hole themselves away from love? How many would fully put their hearts back out on the chopping block fully knowing they were probably going to be trampled by the world’s largest roller-skating buffalo herd?

Die-hards do this every season. We forgive, wipe the slate clean and put our hearts on the chopping block all over again. We love lyrically and unconditionally.

One of my mom’s favorite Dave Matthews Band songs, “Lying In the Hands of God,”features the lyric “Save your sermons for someone who’s afraid to love,” and I got to thinking about the lyric yesterday as I was narrowly avoiding being hit by a car crossing the street at a crosswalk, nonetheless. I got to thinking about it because it seems so many people are afraid to love today. Afraid that if they put their hearts out there and do something nice for or show love to others, they’ll have their feelings and hearts trampled. Or if they show concern, generosity or love, people will think they’re weak and take advantage of them. And for good reason. Many of them will. However, it’s absolutely imperative to the survival of our society — more important than whether a snowflake or deplorable is in the White House — that we remember love is not a whisper or a weakness, but strong.

It’s been a brutal six, near seven years. It’s been heartbreaking watching that thief known as dementia sneak into my mom’s brain and steal everything that made her so special and unique piece by piece. It’s been heartbreaking watching the days of her flirting with Latin ballplayers and calling me a broke pimp burn away. Soul crushing watching her become a mere shell of her former self.

However, I’ll be eternally grateful that I got to be there to help my dad take care of her these past six years. How appreciative I am that I got to laugh with her and dad when she pooted getting in the car, something she did quite regularly near the end. Grateful that I still got to crack jokes and rib on her like I did when she was healthy, calling her Karen and asking when she was going to report us to management. Glad I got to see that huge smile of hers on an everyday basis. Absolutely blessed I got to sing The Spaniels’ “Goodnight Sweetheart Goodnight” to her before bed like she used to do with my brother and me when we were younger. Blessed that I, along with my brother and dad, got to be right by her side as she transitioned.

More importantly, I am so grateful I got to be there for six years and take care of her and love her like she always loved me. Like I told her as she was transitioning, taking care of her was the biggest privilege of my life.

My brother reminded me the other day of another Dave Matthews Band lyric from the song “Pig” that goes, “There’s bad times but that’s OK, just look for love in it.” And while we’re all hurting and missing her like crazy, trust me, we’ve found a lot of in our struggles throughout her battle and over the past few years.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had my faith restored in people after random strangers helped us get mom off the ground and into the car or bandaged her up if she had a cut or start bleeding. Or the incredible nurses, nursing aides, attendees, doctors, caretakers and social workers like Amie Pyron, Deb and Maria Hardy who treated and loved mom like their own despite knowing her a short amount of time.

I remember reading an article on ESPN.com back in 2016 after the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series title in 108 years. The writer, Wright Thompson, told the story a man who wrote his late wife’s name on Wrigley Field’s long brick wall facing Waveland Ave. Thompson talked about a church service he attended the day of the Game 7 where the pastor preached long suffering. He told the story of a woman who listened to Cubs games religiously on the radio for 93 years and how she passed away two days before Game 7. He wrote about her two daughters writing a message on the wall that read, “Mom, thank you for teaching us to believe in ourselves, love and the Cubs. Enjoy the view from the ultimate skybox.”

That’s romance. Loving through the thick and thin. Loving unconditionally. Loving lyrically. And as I read the ESPN.com article, I kept thinking about mom and how she loved us and everybody else no matter what. Even if she got mad at you, called you a shit ass and didn’t speak to you for three days over you making fun of her for walking into a glass door, tripping over a crack in the sidewalk or dropping an iron on her head, she would eventually come back around and love you even more.

In his ESPN article, Thompson wrote about a woman whose mother was a die-hard Cubs fan and had passed away between Game 2 and 3. He told the story of how her daughter watched the Cubbies dominate Game 6 while wearing her mom’s Cubs jacket, waving a plastic Cubs flag that had been in her mom’s room, drying her eyes with a Cubs towel somebody brought her mom the week before she died. Thompson also wrote about the woman wanting a sign her mom’s presence wasn’t gone and how her mom sent her a rainbow while she was watching the game.

I was working at Averett University when the Cubs won the World Series and I remember my co-worker saying she didn’t understand why Cubs fans were getting so emotional. We explained to her that generations of people had lived their whole lives without seeing the Cubbies win the World Series and their victory was cathartic. A reward for their loyalty.

For those of you that don’t know, my mom was a teacher in the Danville public school system for 35 years. Over the last week, I have been inundated by phone calls, text messages and Facebook messages from her former students telling me how much she meant to them. I had a lady reach out to me over Facebook today and tell me her husband, who can’t speak due to a stroke, recognized her as his teacher and got excited. I also had one of her former students reach out to me the other day and tell me that no matter how much trouble she gave mom in the classroom, mom always forgave and loved her and went above and beyond for her.

I know she’s smiling from her seat in the “ultimate skybox.”

Speaking of the ultimate skybox, she’s been winking quite a bit at me since passing last Friday. I’ve always believed that whenever I see rays of light coming from the clouds, somebody is going to heaven. The other day I was coming back from Chick-fil-A when I saw three rays of light coming down from the sky over the neighborhood — her way of letting me know she was in the “ultimate skybox” with her folks. Then there was her two favorite two Dave Matthews Band songs, “Loving Wings” and “Louisiana Bayou” playing across my phone randomly last Saturday. Me walking smack dab into a road sign today.

Thanks for letting me know your presence is still here, mom. And when it’s my turn to come home, we’ll smoke a mile-long cigarette together and watch the A-Braves crush everyone.

Love ya, kid!