What Kind of Woman Did I Marry?

It was late in the afternoon on Saturday. I was driving home from Maine on Interstate 81 south of Scranton. I had been on the road for nine hours already, bone tired, hamstrings barking. I still had a hundred miles left before our hotel in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. But, I had caught my second wind because Red Sox/Astros game 2 was on the radio. Now, with baseball to distract me, the throbbing pains in my butt and back from driving over 500 miles seemed to have diminished. Then my wife did something so out of character…she asked me a baseball question. First, some context.

In the first inning of the game, J.D. Martinez had hit a grand slam home run for the Red Sox. It was now the second inning and once again the Red Sox had the bases loaded with Rafael Devers at the plate. Pam, who is famous for her sports cluelessness, turns to me and asks a surprisingly prescient question:

“What are the odds that the Red Sox could hit another grand slam now after hitting one last inning?”

For a brief moment I was stunned that A. She had been paying attention to what happened an inning ago, and B. That she was even aware that the bases were now loaded. Once I recovered from the surprise I answered something like, “I suppose its possible, but not very likely. Grand slams are extremely rare, especially in the playoffs.”

What I didn’t know was that the radio feed of the game we were listening to had an almost 45 second delay from the television broadcast, and back in Short Pump my sister Paula was watching and had just sent Pam a text informing her that Mr. Devers had, in fact, hit yet another grand slam. So, my wife was basically messing with me. But, thats not all she was doing. She was also secretly taking photographs of me, first in nervous apprehension, and second in celebration…

This is the kind of woman I married.