Happy Mother's Day from the Under Review

How my mom and a utility infielder made me fall in love with baseball.

Brendan Harris was a shortstop for the Minnesota Twins. He played 296 games across three seasons with the team from 2008-2010. In those three years he made 1,063 plate appearances where he could have just left his bat in the dugout.

“Oh good, Brendan’s up,” surely was never uttered.

In his 296 games with Minnesota (by far his most with any team), he posted a batting average of .251, 14 home runs, 90 runs batted in and had all of one stolen base.

The two coolest things about Brendan Harris were that he wore Michael Jordan’s number on his jersey and he was my mom’s favorite player.

Yes, Brendan Harris was my mom’s favorite Twin. Yes, my mom knows what she’s talking about it when it comes to sports. She simply has a unique (and better) set of criteria for a player to warrant favorite-level status.

Now, six years since Harris’s last days with the Twins, I’m happy I can finally say I understand what she was talking about.

My parents took me to my first baseball game in 1993 when I was a toddler. I was crying, and I was with my family and about 12 other families watching the St. Paul Saints. My parents say they took my sister and me to those games because they wanted to teach us about the beauty of outdoor baseball. Only in Minnesota, with the big league Twins stuck under an off-white Teflon sky, would you need to specify between indoor and outdoor baseball.

I remember getting to the park, the sun on my face, the smell of hot dogs in my nose and punching my fist into a fake leather mitt as if anticipating a foul ball in my direction at any second. We’d get to our seats in row JJ on the third base line and right as I’d sit down mom would say “look at the grass.” Fresh green grass as far as the eye could see. It’s devastating they would ever play the game on AstroTurf.

Other than Jack Morris and Daryl Strawberry, I don’t remember many of the Saints players I cheered on but that didn’t stop Midway Stadium from becoming my favorite childhood playground. I do remember hassling the opposing bullpen for free balls, the pig, running aimlessly around the park, fake coughing every time someone lit up a cigarette, the grass, and I remember my mom keeping score. Mom always keeps score.

I still love baseball, though I never keep score, and thanks to public subsidies I can now watch the Twins outside too. I love baseball for many of the reasons that everyone does. Does it really get any better than a dog and a beer at the park on a summer day? But I love it even more because it reminds me of my parents and how they both taught me to love the game.

Passion for the game I learned from my father. Perhaps that will get profiled in June. Until then, well, sorry dad. The appreciation for the game (like to never leave a game early no matter what) was all mom.

While my Dad and I tended to hate our favorite players as much as we loved them, a fact that is still unfortunately too true for both of us, mom was able to find the beauty in everything every one of them did. Even Brendan Harris.

Harris had been hitting in the high .180s for the better part of his first season with the club. It was not uncommon to hear my father and I ruthlessly cursing Harris’ inability at the plate during his punchless stretch. Amidst all of our profanity-laced negativity, I’ll never forget mom and the contrast in what she saw.

She saw the way he swallowed up incoming ground balls like a vacuum, the way he turned two from short, from second, even from third. In each of his three seasons with the Twins, Harris played every single infield position besides catcher and mom noticed his subtle brilliance at every one. She saw the thousands of perfect throws to first, and the countless diving stops that came before them. She saw how he was always one of the first Twins to emerge from the dugout to congratulate a comrade on a home run well belted, and the first to give that same teammate an encouraging slap on the rear end after striking out with the bases loaded.

Mom didn’t see a baseball player who couldn’t hit like my dad and me. She saw a baseball player, playing every position, doing everything he possibly could to help the Twins win a game. She watched Brendan Harris play baseball and saw nothing but artistry. I love that.

I love you, mom. Happy Mother’s Day and happy baseball season.

Thank you too, Brendan. Sorry for yelling.