RMJ 115 June 10

TUESDAY, JUNE 10 ● Los Angeles, vs Dodgers

Breakfast on the lanai. More dry, sunny weather. Not too hot; just right.

I wouldn’t want to live in LA. It has grown into a chaos of humanity that is a little disturbing. But this leafy enclave my folks have created here is mighty nice. Ryan loves to visit. With the pool, the guest house, and Laura’s three girls, he lives like a king.

 

I swam a mile after breakfast, then Rick and I went on a grim errand. He asked me to go along, because he thought he might break down. I had no such fear. In fact, he was considering hiding the ashes from Mom, for fear that seeing them would throw her deeper into despair.

I had another slant on things.

“If it were me,” I said, “and Judy died, I would want to have a nice urn, maybe something that was a favorite of hers. And I would want it in a special place in the house where I would see it from time to time and feel that she was still there with me.”

“That’s great,” Rick said. “That’s a totally different way of looking at it than I had.  Maybe Mom will feel that way too. I hope so.”

The secretary at the mortuary was alone in the building when we arrived. It was her first day on the job. Actually, I think her concern over whether she was doing things the right way softened the delivery of the death certificates and ashes. In trying to help her with the paperwork, we actually got the goods in the car and headed home before we had a chance to dwell on the contents of the packages.

Rick put the ashes in a closet in Dad’s office. Later, he told Mom where they were, in an offhand manner. She didn’t seem upset, but who knows how she really feels?

I’ll say one thing: she’s getting her girlish figure back the hard way. She’s still not eating.

           

Tonight we played a better ballgame. We won the battle 6-3, but we may have lost one of our best soldiers in the process: Shane Reynolds had to come out after three innings. He has had a sore knee for a while. Now, it seems he may need surgery. No wonder he hasn’t been pitching well. He never told us how much he was hurting.

I have done the same thing myself, but it is not good for the ballclub. We may have been able to win some of the games he pitched if we had started Ramón Garcia, for example. You think you are going above-and-beyond for the team when you play with an injury. Most of the time, you are hurting the team while you do further harm to yourself.

José Lima, Mike Magnante, Russ Springer, and Billy Wagner collaborated to hold down the Dodgers. The big blow was struck by Biggio, with the bases loaded in the eighth inning.

“Let’s see if Biggio can hit the jackpot,” I said to Bill, hoping he would try to hit rather than work the count as he often does. Well, it wasn’t a perfecta, but almost. He hit the first pitch, a 95 MPH fastball form Antonio Osuna, off the top of the wall in left-center, clearing the bases.