Cleaning House (One Sixty-Two: Day 143)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Forty-Three: Melvin Mora, Colorado Rockies

Today we had it out. They refused to clean their rooms once again, and then they wanted to turn the living room into a third play area. I said no. They pouted. And on it went.

I get little help on the cleaning front because my wife believes our two girls need to take ownership over their own rooms. If they don’t want to clean, she says, then let them deal with the consequences themselves. I have just a wee bit of obsessive-compulsiveness within me, so I cringe when I see the clothes strewn about and the emptied bins of American Girl doll clothes all over the floor. I often give in and clean the rooms myself, which only serves to enable the thing I’m trying to change.

So what is a father to do? How do you make it through the moments when two kids seem like two more than you can handle?

You think of Melvin Mora, that’s what you do. The Colorado Rockies third baseman, now in his 12th season as a major-leaguer, is the father of 9-year-old quintuplets. I am sure that this man’s home features a frenzy of activity the likes of which I have never seen. If I’m going to stress out over two messy rooms, I can only imagine what it’s like for a father of five active fourth-graders. I would imagine that you learn to put things like dirty socks into perspective. You choose instead to check on how everyone is feeling today, and if the homework’s been completed, and if everybody has eaten. You spend some time playing and talking with your kids, and you listen to them tell you about their classes and friends and sports teams. Cleaning up, I would think, falls a bit lower on the list.

At age 38, Melvin Mora is near the end of a successful career that has seen him collect nearly 1,500 hits while playing various infield and outfield positions for the New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, and Colorado Rockies. Mora’s quintuplets weren’t born yet when he appeared in the playoffs for the first and only time, with the 1999 Mets. This year, Mora has been a backup for the Rockies, but he has started nearly every day since starting third baseman Ian Stewart went down with an injury a couple of weeks ago. And during Mora’s time in the lineup, the Rockies have become baseball’s hottest team, winning 10 straight games and pulling to within 1½ games of the National League West division lead. If the red-hot Rockies keep it up, perhaps the Mora Five will have the chance to see their dad play in the postseason, after all.

There’s probably very little time for cleaning in the Mora household these days, other than all the sweeping that Dad’s team has been doing at the expense of other baseball teams. It’s a busy time of year, what with school starting and pennant races running full-tilt. It’s the kind of bustle that leaves kids to take care of their own rooms.

After all, the American Girl doll clothes won’t destroy the house. And, when you least expect it, they will clean. They are your kids, and you’ve raised them well. Take a breath, Dad. Watch a ballgame. Check out those Rockies.