Until I met Trinity in person, I had never met Trinity in person. Internet friendships are like that. Message boards. Instant messages. Millions of people bonding on thousands of different websites over hundreds of varied interests. Ours was a community writing project about characters in a Boston apartment complex. It was geeky, creative, and sociable - as sociable as any online project can be. My character was a baseball fan. Hers was a banker. They were friends and so were we.
I talked to a stranger over the internet (see Mom, it’s not so dangerous) the way I would any of my other friends. Her job. My college courses. Anything else that crossed our minds. Spent a year doing that.
Then the Red Sox and the Diamondbacks both made the post-season in 2007. I’d gotten used to checking the Boston box scores just to have something to write about. It taught me to think about the game but I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t care. But with the TV Writer’s Guild strike looming, I figured I might as well cheer for the local Arizona team than invest my time in television shows that were about to go on indefinite hiatus.
I cheered on the Diamondbacks, Trin cheered the Red Sox for the first time and we both fell in love with the game. Opening Day 2008 and we were both fanatics for teams as far from each other as we were.
In July of 2008, I met my best friend for the first time in baggage claim of Logan International. I’d never been so far east in my life and Trin was my guide. A former Boston resident, she showed me the city, how to ride the T, and indulged me when I spent 20 minutes in the Boston Common chasing a squirrel - desert people have a tendency to be surprised by things like that.
We folded ourselves into Fenway Park that trip, knees jammed against the seats in front of us. We ate hot dogs and sang Sweet Caroline and lost our minds when the Red Sox won on the strength of a grand slam over the Green Monster.
At the end of the week, I went home and she went home and we stayed friends. In 2009, Trinity visited me in Tucson and we made the 90 mile trip to Phoenix, pilgrims to the cathedrals of baseball to see Dan Haren rage at the Dodgers. It was the day of the infamous four-out inning and we had seats behind the dugout in the Sunday sunshine.
And then we went back to Tucson and she went home and the vacation ended. We still talked but not as much as we used to. Busy lives pull people in opposite directions and it’s hard to communicate online the way you do in person. Dating websites run ads of happy mostly white straight people but there’s no manual of how what to do when your best friend is on the internet. Nobody runs commercials for that.
It was a long time before the next meeting. Two years is a long time but when she made plans to visit New York City for Spring Break, I invited myself along. The long winter had left me depressed and lonely to a degree I’d never experienced. The trip was a way to break out of it.
We saw four Broadway shows in five days with only a one day gap between shows. That day we rode the subway from Harlem where we were staying to Brooklyn for shopping to Harlem to change clothes and then all the way to Queens to see the New York Mets play the Arizona Diamondbacks at Citi Field. If the trains gave out frequent flier miles, we would have raked them in.
The Dbacks lost but it didn’t matter. My father grew up in Brooklyn and the Mets were his team. I lost him to cancer when I was six but it gives me great pleasure and terrible heartache to know that we’d follow this sport together if he lived. That game was for my daddy.
The New York trip was just about eight months ago and tonight is New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow is 2012 and tonight is a night for resolutions. I’m spending it watching Moneyball because Opening Day is months away and I’m 60 pages from the end of the book. Which explains why I decided to put into words something Trin and I have been doing since 2008.
We’ve seen three baseball games in three different parks around the country. Why stop now? We’re going to see them all. Two women - two sports fans - paying tribute to the greatest game in the world and to what it means to be a friend.
Three down and 27 to go. I can think of worse things to spend the next 20 years of my life doing with my best friend.
Moneyball was right. It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball.
How can you not be romantic about baseball, indeed?
8 years ago
