Birthday present hit a home run

Editor’s note: This column is being reprinted from April 20, 2005. Jack and Connie and baseball were regular column topics each April. This one included more family as a special surprise. While not a surprise for Connie this time, their daughters were all back in town last week for a birthday celebration and the solar eclipse.

When it comes to birthdays, sometimes you hit a home run and sometimes you strike out.

I’ve had plenty of gifts misfire over the years, but I think I’ve knocked it over the fence a good many times as well.

Earlier this month, when Connie notched another year on the calendar, I didn’t have much in the way of presents for the occasion.

We’d taken a trip over spring break, and the intent was for that to count as part of her birthday celebration. But as any husband can tell you, that’s a move into dangerous territory.

To compensate, I proposed that we take a trip down to Indy for an Indians game as a way to celebrate.

Technically, it was the day after her birthday.

But I was knocked down with a cold on the big day and actually spent most of it in bed.

I could tell when we headed out that Saturday morning that the trip was going to be a good one. The sun was shining. Spring was in the air. And my cold had abated.

Meanwhile, as we headed south, I could see the wheels turning in my wife’s head.

ESP is one of those things which comes and goes in a marriage, but this time I knew what she was thinking.

It’s a great day for a ball game, she thought. But it’s too bad Sally can’t join us.

Now, all of our daughters are baseball fans. But the twins came to it a little later than their sister. They’ll freely admit that they were pills when they attended their first Cincinnati Reds game, if they even remember it. Today, they’re loyal Red Sox fans and live in the metropolitan Boston area; but as children, they were impatient with the game.

Not so their sister.

Sally’s been a baseball fan from the beginning and marked a number of her birthdays with the Fort Wayne Wizards. So it’s been more of a tradition over the years for the three of us — Sally, Connie, and I — to attend about half a dozen minor league games each summer.

This particular game, however, would be just the two of us.

Or so my wife thought as we passed through New Castle and got onto Interstate 70 heading west.

I could tell she didn’t want to complain, but having Sally with us would have been the frosting on the cake. Instead, our youngest was down in Bloomington at Indiana University.

Or was she?

Secrets are hard to keep in our family, but this one was carefully sealed. Sally and I knew, of course, and so did her sisters in Boston. Only my wife was in the dark.

Thanks to a friend on her floor, Sally was heading north to Indy while we came in from the east.

I’d hoped to meet up as a complete surprise on the sidewalk by the gate to Victory Field that we usually use, but that didn’t work out.

Still, there was a moment of triumph — yes, a home run — when my wife noticed that I’d picked up three tickets, not two, from the “will call” window.

Before she could utter a word, I said, “Now we just have to find Sally.”

Five minutes later, after we’d met up and had found our seats, I still felt as if I was rounding the bases.

Sometimes you strike out, but sometimes — if you keep your eye on the ball — you can knock it out of the park.