My mind is tired. Pre-transplant radiation and chemo will start in about two weeks, and I have a lot to do in the meantime. This week I have almost three days of appointments at Stanford (signing consent forms, echocardiogram, pulmunary testing, biopsy, etc. etc.) plus a couple other appointments I need to make (teeth cleaned, any possible cavities filled -- to minimize the chance of infection in my mouth). And stuff to do at work, since I'll be gone during my busiest time of the year. I know it will all get done, at least the most important stuff will. But my mind is tired from trying to figure it all out. So I spent the afternoon watching baseball.

When I was in the hospital for an infection back in early April, feeling very sick and weak, when I heard a familiar voice coming from the TV.

"Ray Fosse!" I was so delighted. Ray Fosse is the "color commentator" for the Oakland Athletics, "my" baseball team. In the midst of my sickness, I had forgotten that baseball season was beginning. A tear actually rolled down the side of my face, and even I was surprised at the poignant emotion I felt just because the baseball season was here. As I watched the game, though, I started to understand why I was feeling what I did.

When I was a kid in the late '60s, I learned to love baseball watching the Cleveland Indians in my hometown. They were a perpetual last-place team, but I was a faithful fan, perhaps because I felt like a perpetual loser myself. I sat up in my room with the radio on and hand-drawn (hand-drawn! with a ruler and sharp pencil! That tells you what my social life was like...) scorecard, carefully keeping track of balls and strikes, just sure that the Indians were going to break out and become winners. Of course, when they finally did become a winning team many years later, I lived on the other side of the country. But I still cheer for them anyway, except for when they play the A's.

Ray Fosse happened to be a catcher for the Indians in those days and was later traded to the A's, playing on their championship teams in the '70s. I started listening to him and the rest of the broadcast team about 15 years ago, when my son James was just a toddler. James was born loving baseball, and at age 2 could identify most of the A's players by their uniform numbers. So we watched together, and became faithful fans in the good years and the bad. I always had the game on, whether I was driving or working in the garden or painting a room. I liked listening to the broadcasters' banter, I appreciated that I didn't have to worry about bad language or offensive jokes. The only thing to get angry about was the occasional bad umpiring call. Year after year while I went through waves of personal growth and trauma, baseball was a peaceful soundtrack, where the saddest thing that could happen was an opponent's walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth. It was a faithful friend no matter if I was doing well or terribly, strong or weak, together or a mess. And I've tried to return the favor.

And I guess that's what tipped my heart and made me feel so sentimental in the hospital room. After several months of the feeling like my world had been turned upside down, of learning new terminology like platelets and neutrophils, of dealing with fevers and mouth-sores and poker-faced doctors...I was reminded that life as I knew it was still going on. Ray Fosse and his friends were still teasing one another in between batters, the Cleveland Indians are still trying to win a World Series, and the worst thing that can happen there is still a walk-off homerun. Hearing the game made me want to get back...to normal, to home, to my life.