I Still Do (One Sixty-Two: Day 147)

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-Seven: Felix Hernandez, Seattle Mariners (via Ken Griffey Jr.)

My baseball memories of Autumn 1995 are dominated by the image of delirious Seattle Mariners baseball players diving atop Ken Griffey Jr. on an evening in early October. They tackled Griffey because, in the bottom of the 11th inning, his slide home had defeated the New York Yankees in the deciding game of the very first American League Division Series. I remember the sinking feeling that came with watching Edgar Martinez lace a Jack McDowell pitch into the left-field corner, and the shouts that followed the sight of both Joey Cora and Griffey dashing around the bases to claim Seattle’s first-ever playoff series. For a Yankees fan who’d gone 14 years without seeing his team in the playoffs, it was a sorry sight.

But that memory, dismal as it may be, is about the only thing that went wrong in my life during that fall a decade and a half ago. This was, after all, the September in which Amy and I were married. Fifteen years ago today, she walked down the aisle with her father and we said a couple of I do’s. Fifteen years ago, we danced and hugged and smiled for the cameras in a glorious celebration of life and commitment. It’s hard to believe that it’s been this long, but life does chug along pretty quickly – sometimes, it seems, about as quickly as that Ken Griffey sprint in October 1995.

After 15 years, I am amazed at how many things I’m still learning about my wife. I’m proud of how resilient we’ve been in working through challenges together. I’m impressed by the passion and effort we’ve given to parenting. I’m thrilled about our mutual willingness to try new journeys, both together and independently. And, more than anything, I’m fascinated by the ways in which my love for her deepens with each year.

If you take away all the team allegiance stuff, there really isn’t a much better sight in baseball history than Griffey’s dash home in ’95. The perfect ballplayer made the perfect run and the perfect slide, then flashed the most perfect smile baseball had seen in a long time. I watched it again today, and as I viewed it I didn’t feel much in the way of Yankee-fan sadness. Instead, it reminded me of the fact that I had watched that play in the bedroom of my new apartment, folding clothes next to a woman to whom I had just been married a few weeks earlier. It wasn’t the play I thought of; it was Amy. She was there with me, that day and the next day and thousands more days after.

Fifteen years. Wow. Ken Griffey has retired now, and Felix Hernandez is the perfect player in Seattle these days. The Yankees have made the playoffs nearly every year since then, and both teams have provided thrills aplenty.

And that’s all just fine. But for me today, 15 years means just one thing: I still do, honey. Today, tomorrow, and forever.