Grab Bag: How a Baseball Game Changed My Life

A single player in a single game transformed who I would become.

On Opening Day, which was March 27, i.e., yesterday, my thoughts turn to baseball, but not for the reason it grabs most people’s attention. As far as sports goes, baseball is pretty awesome but no sport has ever really held my interest for long.

Except for one game.

My widowed mother watched baseball on TV and it was often mid-game when I got home from school. I occasionally watched a game, as she often made me do the ironing, which she set up in our living room. I was, at most, mildly interested.

And then one day I came home to a game between, if my memory is accurate, the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I was walking past the TV when the name of the next player up to bat appeared on the screen: Jesus Alou. I stood there transfixed. Jesus was his name? What???

Jesus Alou

We attended the Community Presbyterian Church on Georgia St. in Vallejo, across the street from Steffan Manor, my elementary school, a remarkably good one. On most Sunday mornings, my mother, still dressed in her pajamas, robe, and slippers, dropped me off for Sunday school and choir. I remember her attending on just two occasions: Easter, which I loved because I got a new outfit, and on the Sunday following the murder of JFK, which is fixed almost as visibly in my mind as it was on that day. I especially remember the moment when the church secretary entered behind the choir loft and whispered to our minister, whose face seemed to sag by several inches as she spoke.

Community Presbyterian Church, Vallejo

He returned to the podium, looking sad and worn, and announced that Lee Harvey Oswald had been killed. A shroud of despair fell over the already sad congregation.

But I digress. It had been earlier that year, in the spring, when my life shifted.

Realizing that Jesus was simply a name transformed my view of the world.

I whispered his name, Jesus Alou, to myself, over and over and over. Soon, I learned of his two brothers, Matty and Felipe. The name Matty held little interest for me but Felipe Alou was pure poetry to me. Jesus Alou was magical.

The Alou Brothers

I tried to be a good Christian, a believer, a girl of faith, but it never took hold. I still went to church after this but I began to question everything.

St. Peter’s Chapel, Mare Island, Vallejo

Before long, I was married, at 16, at St. Peter’s Chapel on Mare Island. We thought marriage would keep my husband out of the draft, but the exemption ended six days before our nuptials. My husband was drafted and sent to Okinawa a few weeks before I started my senior year of high school.

At the altar, St. Peter’s Chapel, shortly after the ceremony

Fast forward a couple of years. I have a 7-month-old daughter, my husband has just been discharged from the Army, and we are headed to Vallejo to celebrate his mother’s July 14 birthday. I made an appointment to have our daughter baptized that morning. For now, all I will say is that the baptism was my last act as a believer and what an experience it was. For this part of the story, you’ll have to wait a few days.

In a year, our daughter Nicolle was born and having her baptized was the furthest thing from my mind. All because those two words on a television screen, Jesus and Alou, eclipsed everything I had been taught about the world.

Thank you, Jesus, Felipe, and Matty.