A FAMILY OUTING

She'll probably get her eggplant Parmesan in Cooperstown!

Mom is not a baseball fan, and has upheld that status all her life. She makes comments about “dem bums” and offers a long pause that says: See, I know the terminology from the Brooklyn days, when we had the real bums in Brooklyn.”Mom is an intelligent woman who raised four daughters and a stinker, but her head was never in the sand. She pitied my father and me for rooting for the Dodgers and Mets, without any commitment on her part.

The Braves and I both lost!

Once in 1958, the Yankees were locked in a struggle with the Milwaukee Braves and the Yankees were down a few games, Mom, out of the blue made a bet with me! Yes, the pasta queen and disciplinarian of the household laying down a bet on her teenaged son, that the YANKEES, would win the world series. Feeling good about my chances, I put up my end and then when the series was over, had it kicked in by Mom! She won the bet! I had lost a baseball bet to a non-fan: my MOTHER, and with it went my pride. Mom had been around long enough to know the Yankees would not be denied! She knew only Mickey Mantle (Who she thought was arrogant) and Yogi Berra on the Yankees, and had no idea of who played on the Braves. I lost the bet! Why did she challenge me?

It lost its luster!

A few years later Dad got some tickets for the Mets at Shea Stadium. I was still a teenager (I aged slowly in those days), and was taking Mom, a couple of sisters I believe and me along. Mom was excited to be able to go to the game. In fact all week before the game she kept saying how she wanted a hotdog at the stadium, and how delicious stadium hotdogs were. The Friday night before the game there was a flurry of activity swirling around the pizza we were eating. Mom was cooking! In a long Pyrex dish sat eggplant Parmesan, and instructions to Dad that he had to go out in the morning to buy rolls.

A true American tradition: baseball & eggplant Parmesan!

The next morning, Mom was ready for the game. In her hand was a shopping bag, filled with eggplant Parmesan sandwiches, stuffed in long rolls and oozing in her delicious spicy sauce! Move over stadium hotdogs, Mom was coming.

We whipped out those sandwiches around the second inning, and Mom, never had a stadium hotdog!

“Mom! You never had a stadium hotdog!”

Mom: “Who’s going to eat that crap?”