John Rossi: My wife and baseball

When I married my wife Frances in 1966, she took me not only for better or worse, but also for baseball. I had been a baseball fan in the true sense of the word “fanatic” since I was ten years old and saw the Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds on a rainy Sunday in May 1946.

When we were dating, Frances put up with my near obsession with baseball and occasionally went to games probably to appease me. For Christmas 1970, she even ordered tickets for opening day at the new Veterans Stadium. It was a brutally cold April day and yet she nobly put up with the cold to please me. 

When she moved into my house, she didn’t realize its nickname was “The Dugout.” A number of henpecked husbands back in those days of one television per house would come to my bachelor quarters to watch sports, especially the Phillies. She enjoyed the male comradery and even wrote a piece about her experience for the old Irish Edition which she accurately titled, “The Only Girl in the Dugout.”

Over the years a strange thing happened — she started to get interested in my hobby, limited at first but growing over the years. She was a true Philadelphia chauvinist and rooted for all things Philadelphia including other team sports. She found football a little too brutal for her tastes but put up with the Eagles games I watched. Hockey she never understood — it was too fast for her — but she admired watching the 76ers at times, showing good sports instinct by telling me that they were the best athletes overall.

Her true love, however, was baseball. Over the years she began to pick up the nuances of the game, occasionally informing me that a pitch was a slider not a curveball. Like all fans she began to have her favorites: Larry Bowa, Mitch Williams, John Kruk, Ricky Botalico She had been a teacher for a time and said they reminded her of what she called “the good bad boys” she had in class and were the most fun to teach.

I owe her many things: my daughter Monica, fifty-six years of a marriage I can honestly say was fun. She was the one who convinced me to start writing seriously about baseball and its role in American history. “You are always talking about baseball and its importance, why not do something.about it,” she would constantly say and I finally listened to her.  At her urging in 1985, I put together a course “Baseball and American Culture” at La Salle University. It was one of the first of its kind in the United States and I may say very popular with the students. The Administration was a little doubtful but eventually approved it. I later expanded the course into a book which I dedicated to her. My second career as a baseball historian I owe to her.

Around 2010, Frances developed a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis which gradually slowed her down but saw her interest in sports, especially baseball, only deepen. During the baseball season our routine was simple. If the Phillies were playing, I would prepare dinner so we could eat early in time for the game. She would watch the political news — she was a political junky also — and around 7:30 she would come into the living room to watch the game. 

One night the Phillies were getting beat badly and I turned off the game. “Aren’t you watching the game? Oh, turn it on. I want to listen to Tom and the Kruker.” Tom McCarthy was a special favorite and she would get mad if someone else was doing the game. “Where’s Tom,” she would say. She hated it when the Phillies games were done by another network. “Its not the same,” she would say, without Tom.

A lot of her baseball instincts were good. She didn’t like Gabe Kapler, saying he talked down to the writers in the postgame show. She thought Joe Girardi was a worrier and told me that Rob Thomson was a gentleman. She liked Kyle Schwarber because she said he looked like he was having fun playing. She recognized how good Harper was, asking me once: “He’s a superstar isn’t he?” Just as the Phillies team got hot in July 2022, she took a turn for the worse and died at the end of the month.

I still watch the Phillies when I can but something has gone out of the game for me.

John P. Rossi is a retired Professor of History at Ls Salle University.