Phoebe at 19: A Look Back

I remember when Phoebe’s baseball fixation emerged: at a Pirates vs.  Indians game in Cleveland. She just absorbed it like a little sponge, and she wanted more. It was something about seeing baseball live, in a stadium with lots of cheering fans, at night, with the lights. Something set a hook that night, and she’d be forever enthralled. June 29, 2011.

                 
Phoebe had just turned 15 in July 2011 when a mysterious box arrived in the mail. I had just gotten my first iPhone, and didn’t really know how to run it. By mistake, I had my camera set to Video. Oops. I couldn’t figure out how to get it back to Photo in time, so I made one of my very first videos of her opening the box. From the very beginning, Pirates centerfielder Andrew McCutchen has held a special place in her heart. Her room is full of McCutchen memorabilia to this day. So it seemed only right and proper to get her a signed baseball. Our dear friend Mimi, cousin to the delightful Pirates commentator Greg Brown, engineered it and had it sent to our house!

The backstory on this video is cool. It was so sweet of Greg Brown to send that signed ball to Phoebe, and we were so grateful, that I sent him a thank-you email with a link to the video within. Well, Greg went and found Cutch and showed him this video, and he wrote me back to tell me that Andrew got “just as emotional as Phoebe” when he saw it.
As I’m writing this, the sounds of an Allstar game are coming from the living room.  Phoebe’s explaining something to Liam about how players get selected for Allstars games. Something about leagues and standings and I don’t know what. She’s like a walking baseball encyclopedia, and the rest of us (Bill excepted) can only look things up.

We went to two Pirates games on two successive weekends this July, in honor of Phoebe’s 19th birthday. We went because she is home this summer and we sense this may be her last one here. She was adamant that she didn’t want to be at PNC Park on her birthday, July 11, though, because if the Pirates happened to lose to the Cardinals on that night of all nights, she might never recover. So we watched the July 11 game at home, and it was a bloody slugfest with a thoroughly nasty and (we can only surmise) legally blind umpire who made not one but TWO hideously wrong calls that robbed the Pirates of any hope of prevailing. I have never, ever seen Phoebe as outraged, furious and inconsolable as she was when that happened. But her beloved Bucs clawed their way back and beat the Cardinals anyway with a walkoff homer by none other than Andrew McCutchen in the fourteenth torturous inning. What a birthday present, delivered well after midnight.  Figures that Cutch would have a hand in Phoebe’s best birthday present, twice in a row.

Oh, that ball in the 2011 video? Cutch has signed it now three times. I’m sure he enjoys seeing Phoebe grow up as much as we do. Needless to say, he remembers “Miss Phoebe” and gives her a warm greeting and a big smile each time he sees her. Well, who wouldn’t?

The other great love in Phoebe’s life (besides baseball) was not able to come visit for her birthday as he has the last two years. Sad face. So we felt we had to put on a little extra DOG for her this year. But psst, don’t worry, I’m taking her to Boston with me when I give three talks July 21, 22 and 23 (see left sidebar for details).

Chet Baker loves to kiss Phoebe. He kisses her so much sometimes he gets a little carried away and nibbles her. We call it nibble kissing.

Sometimes he gets REALLY carried away and it hurts just a bit! You never know what that dog is going to do!

Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds, due in spring 2012. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com