Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Yesterday afternoon, Pete Abraham excerpted a portion of Cynthia Rodriguez's chat with Michael Kay on the new YES program, YESterdays:
"As tough and big as [Alex] seems, he is real wimpy around doctors or any type of medical situation. I don't know why I thought the birth of our child would be different. In the middle of the night, I realized that I needed to go to the hospital. I wake him up. The first thing that comes out of his mouth, 'Can we call your mother?' And I started, 'No. Let's wait and make sure that I am in labor, and make sure that, you know, it's the middle of the night.' And go to the hospital and everything. And finally, a few hours later, I said, 'I think you can call my mom now.'"Uh, and the color came back to his face when I told him he could call my mom. And then forget it. I was like not even having a baby; he was the one. The one nurse had a cold cloth on his head. The other nurse had the blood pressure on his arm. And my mother was like rubbing his back. And he is passed out on a couch. And I am there, in the middle of labor. And really, I am not being paid much attention to besides the doctor and a couple of nurses. And he is there moaning. In between pushing, I am going, 'Honey, are you OK?' And are you breathing? Are you OK?'"
I can't even watch child birth on TV, so I can only imagine how I'd fare up close. Still, this story reminded me of another, more upsetting reality for baseball wives. From Pat Jordan's classic profile of Steve and Cyndi Garvey, "Trouble in Paradise":
The other day my daughter fell out of a tree and broke her wrist. My husband and I rushed her to the hospital. While she was in the operating room I had to fill out a questionaire for a nurse. When I said my husband's occupation was 'baseball player,' she asked, for what team? I told her. Then she asked, what position? I got so pissed off, I shoved the paper at my husband and told him to deal with her, she was obviously more interested in him than our daughter. Now there's another woman who's gonna think I'm just a stuck-up wife of a star.Anyway, just before they set my daughter's wrist, my husband had to leave to go to the stadium. He couldn't wait. That's the clearest vision of when the game comes first. Before anything. It's so cut-and-dried with him. I got furious. It's always been like that. Another time I had a baby while he was playing in the World Series. When they wheeled me back from the delivery room--I'm just coming out of the anesthesia--the nurse is putting on the TV. 'I thought you'd like to watch your husband playing in the World Series,' she says. I screamed at her to shut it off. Hell, he didn't come to watch me. I could have died in childbirth and my man wouldn't have been there. The burden is always on the wife's shoulders. Her man is never there.
For a candid and revealing portrait of what is like to be the wife of a ball player, consider Home Games: Two Baseball Wives Speak Out, written by Bobbie Bouton and Nancy Marshall. Both women are divorced their husbands, Jim Bouton and Mike Marshall.
That said, I understand and appreciate A-Rod's reaction. Its beautiful, yes, but oh no, it is not. A-Rod is lucky he has two girls. I can only imagine his reaction if he had a son, and felt compelled (as I did) to be there for moral support during the circumcision. I'm queasy now just remembering it.
But oddly, I had no problems whatsoever with it during the births of my three kids. Didn't bother me a bit.
When the nurses say it's the big guys who squeal the most, perhaps there's a reason for it. Maybe some of us non-philandering males get a big jolt of oxytocin (the calming/nurturing anti-testosterone hormone) when we watch our spouses give birth.
That made me queasy.
While it's a different story for minor leaguers, I still don't have a lot of sympathy for players' wives. For the majority, they knew what they were getting into. You wanted a ballplayer husband, you got one. Deal.
Yeah, I'm sure she's saying just that while she struts around in her satin night dress, couture sandals, marble floors, and gets in her luxary car.
I read Cynthia's quotes about not knowing who ARod was and not knowing people made a profession by playing baseball.
W-H-A-T-E-V-A!!!!
;-)
I think Bobbie Bouton and Nancy Marshall fall much more in the latter category.
I thought people had control of their own lives, married or not, she married him because she knew quite well what his dream was and she wanted to make sure it came to realization. And guess what? She wanted to be there when it all happened.
The next thing that she'll think is unfair is that there are all these women around professional baseball players and she could never possibly believe that he would cheat on her. There's reality and then there's relative reality.
She was occupied, doing what had to be done. Me, on the other hand, I just had to sit there and listen to what sounded like intense suffering, helpless to prevent it.
To this day, she'll say things like, "Oh, it wasn't so bad" and I look at her like she has two heads.
It's like she wasn't even there and in fact, she wasn't, in the sense that she was in a transcendent state while I was not.
So I know of what Mrs. Alex speaks.
The things we do for our kids . . .
17 "Transcendent state" indeed. =) For our first, I know my wife was emotionally like that, and between the epidural and whatever else they were giving her, physically too. I did not see too much labor in that labor. ;)
Yeah, I know how it is. Our midwife asked us if we wanted our baby circumcised if he was a boy and I asked her whether there was any reason for this.
"No, not really," she answered.
"Then no fucking way!" I replied.
And that was that. No one's butchering my son on his first day in the great wide world.
Speaking of the things we do for our kids, I just spaced out on picking him up from school!
I'm giving the final exam today so my schedule is different and I literally just spaced out and didn't make the connection that if I was at the exam I couldn't pick up the kid as I do every day.
Fortunately the spouse was able to do it, but I only realized this after the school called me about five minutes after the time I'm supposed to be there.
It's amazing more kids don't fall down wells or into fires.
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