Last week, on a perfectly beautiful day, Ty dropped Babalouie off early in the morning. We had an elaborate plan involving Babalouie hanging with me until lunch time. Then there would be much back tracking, driving in circles, switching of cars, checking for tails and other spy craft before the plan resulted in three generations ending up at Target Field, watching the Twins play ball.
Babalouie was dressed for the occasion. In addition to the Twin’s cap Jay gave him, he had his sunglasses and a shirt with a baseball on it.
We had a couple of hours to kill before all that fun could take place so we went to the park. The last time we’d gone down was in the evening, when there were baseball games or practice going on all around us. Babalouie’s head nearly spun off, he was so busy trying to see everything. This particular morning, we had the place all to ourselves. So we ran the bases on field six a few times. I showed him where home plate was and that it was actually shaped like a house. I pointed out the bags to him and told him he had to make sure to step on each one as he ran past. He slipped on second base and fell on his butt.
“Baseball players fall down a lot!” he explained as he jumped back on his feet and headed for third.
Later, we went over to the playground. Shortly after we arrived, the kids in the summer program at the park came out to play. Babalouie met a little girl who had a soccer ball and a football. She even had a horse on her shirt. In short: she was the perfect woman.
They kicked the soccer ball around for a while. When Babalouie pointed at the football and suggested playing some catch, she said “I don’t know how to catch this.” So they just kept kicking the soccer ball.
If she knew how to catch a football, I think he would have asked her to marry him.
An hour later, he was at the gym, where a hundred kids were playing basketball and an hour after that, he was at the park, watching the Twins.
It was a really good day!