The Gal of Summer
How could an otherwise sane adult be brought nearly to tears because 'his' team -- really a group of millionaire mercenaries -- happened to lose an interminable, bewildering ballgame? She was determined to find out.

By Sydney Trent
Sunday, April 1, 2007

WE ARRIVE AT OUR HOTEL IN MELBOURNE, FLA., ON A BALMY WEEKDAY EVENING. The Radisson Suite Hotel is still undergoing renovation after a hurricane the previous summer, and it's hardly swank digs, with work crews buzzing about and patches of water damage pocking the walls and ceilings. But perhaps because the hotel is largely vacant, we've been lucky enough to get the honeymoon suite with a panoramic view of the Atlantic. The minute we set our bags down, Bruce pulls open the sliding glass doors to the balcony overlooking the water, and the smell of humid salt air fills my nostrils. I lean over the railing to watch the surf foam and slap the shore, and the ocean's dull roar seems to replace the blood in my veins, slowing my heart and obsessive thoughts of work and children up north and easing the ever-present tension between my shoulder blades. The paradisiacal atmosphere continues the next morning as we walk, sockless and in khakis, into the nearly empty dining room for breakfast. The room is almost yellow with sunshine as I pore over the Washington Nationals team profile in Street & Smith's 2006 baseball preview issue. This is homework for me, the dutiful student, hoping to prime the pump of my interest in a sport I know almost nothing about.

But the fact of the matter is, my pump is already primed. It's spring training in South Florida, and even before I set foot in the ballpark, the seductive subtropical atmosphere is enough to make even the most stubborn baseball agnostic want very much to believe.

I notice something else as we park our rental car at Space Coast Stadium, a full hour before the 12:05 game time. Bruce is wearing his worn red Phillies cap with the white P, like the one he had when we started dating nearly 20 years ago, and, somehow, even with the gray hair and the soft lines around his eyes, he looks almost as boyishly relaxed as he did then. We are talking about the thumbs-down that Sports Illustrated has given the team for the season. "Even if they do poorly," he counsels me, "there's the appeal of being an underdog."

Multimillion-dollar ballplayers, underdogs? I am thinking.

"Plus, baseball is a sport for optimists," he says. "It's a very long season with a lot of games, and there is always a reason for hope." That's the kind of baseball-as-metaphor talk that has always made me skeptical, but I have to admit, since our arrival in Florida, my husband has, indeed, been looking hopeful -- light of spirit, even -- for the first time in much too long.

IT'S THIS TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF BASEBALL THAT WILL BE MY COURSE OF STUDY THIS SEASON. I have been married for 15 years to an otherwise extremely even-tempered man who is capable of plunging into an unremitting funk for hours when his beloved Phillies lose a close game. And I watched, distantly bemused, during the Nationals' first season as colleagues and friends threw themselves into the grip of their winning home team, undeterred by the potential despair that awaited them should the high not last (and, of course, it didn't).

I consider myself empathetic, and yet I have never understood how rational adults can become so distraught over a sporting event. Oh, and spare me the overwrought parallels between life and baseball. Cooking and home decorating are equivalent traditionally feminine passions of mine, and nobody has promoted them to great symbols of Success and Failure and the Challenges of Human Existence. Failure and success in life -- as well as war, poverty, inequality and death -- can be worth our tears, but the Nats losing to the Phillies or the Phillies losing to the Nats -- I really don't think so.

I was making a version of this speech to my friend Tom during the Nats' inaugural season in 2005 when he blurted out, "That would be a great story!"

Huh?

He explained that I should spend one season trying to attain the level of fandom that would leave me feeling emotionally distraught when "my team" loses, and elation when it wins. Just for fun, I engaged him in what I viewed at the time as a hypothetical exchange. Okay. Which sport? No way with football -- too brutish. Basketball might be the best match. I'm African American. Plus, the pace fits my flitting attention span. But Tom argued for the Nats: They're a new team trying to build a fan base, and my experience could hold an interesting mirror up to that effort.

I agreed, theoretically, that baseball might make the most sense for other reasons, too. I've never felt that being a good wife required that I become a baseball fan, but now my 8-year-old daughter, Alex, is playing on a team coached by my husband, and I think it might be nice to actually understand what they're talking about. And, as I will later note at spring training, the atmosphere at the ballpark is awfully pleasant. Twenty years of flipping through magazines and gabbing with girlfriends while Bruce and his buddies watched the game has shown me this. So it could be useful and fun.

But for me, becoming a fan, especially that kind of getting-upset-over-trivia fan, seemed like a long shot. Until trying soccer at age 40, I had never played a team sport. I grew up before Title IX, the federal law ensuring gender parity in school athletics, really took hold. I was raised in a matriarchal household that emphasized being smart and opinionated and reading anything in sight, but also entertaining Southern-style and wearing lipstick on all occasions. Sports was not on the conversational table.

I guessed that becoming a sports fan was like acquiring a foreign language, best done during childhood, when one's brain and emotions are more pliable. Plus: Who has time to become a fan as an adult, to learn all the subtleties of the game -- 162 very long games -- let alone to build a team attachment? I have a challenging full-time job and two young children. I volunteer and belong to a book club. I have a busy life, like that of many women, which will turn out to be downright grueling this summer, as we will decide to sell our house in the first down real estate market in years and move in September.

So my first thought was: This experiment is doomed from the start. But then I allowed for the slimmest chance that all my preconceptions could turn out to be wrong and, thus provoked, decided to give it a try.

"HEY, NICKY!"

The sound pummeling me from behind is what you would call a bellow -- deep, guttural, the New York accent unmistakable: Think Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver." "This is a far cry from Yankee Stadium -- huh, friend?" A sarcastic guffaw. "Johnson, he's talkin' to himself right now; he's saying, 'Yeah, you're right.'"

Bruce and I are inside the hulk of gray concrete with turquoise plastic seats that is Space Coast Stadium, site of the Nats' spring training, and the guy one row back is yelling. Afraid to turn all the way around, I catch a glimpse of him with my peripheral vision. He's a white guy, middle-age, with a buzz cut and sunglasses. His sweaty red T-shirt clings to his ample gut. The stadium, home to the minor league Brevard Manatees, is not even half-full, but over the next couple days, our friend the Yank will help obscure that fact.

Top of the first inning, the Nats are in the field, and a young rookie is on the mound. ("Frank Robinson knows he won't make the roster but is checking him out, seeing how he'll do," Bruce is narrating, in his role as my baseball tutor.) Today's opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals, score a run, as the Nats fumble a ball in the outfield. "Hey, Johnson!" booms the Yank. "Take I-95 North to Yankee Stadium. We need ya up there!"

Bruce and I exchange a look, and a couple of things occur to me. First: Could I really occupy the same fan base as this guy? Secondly, I start racking my brain for what I know so far about Nats first baseman and power hitter Nick Johnson from reading the sports section. It's the usual just-the-stats résumé, tagged with the fact that he's injury-prone -- a bruised heel last season, a back strain and a bruised cheekbone the year before.

My colleague Lynda tells me that I'll stand a better chance of becoming a fan if I bone up on the players' individual narratives, particularly off the field. And while it sounds a bit stereotypical -- of course, as a woman, I have a need to relate, right? -- I know she's on to something. In 1996, when NBC sought to lure more female viewers by featuring dozens of up-close-and-personal profiles of the athletes in its Olympics coverage, I inhaled -- surprising myself by remaining glued to the television even during that most Neanderthal of sports: boxing. ("Men will sit through the Olympics for almost anything, as long as they get to see some winners and losers," Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, was quoted saying at the time. Women, he said, "want to know who the athletes are, how they got there, what sacrifices they've made. They want an attachment, a rooting interest.") But while my regard for The Post's sportswriters will only increase as the summer progresses, I quickly realize they're writing about baseball for those who already love the sport, not for those in need of seduction.

A few days later, when the Nats take a calculated risk and sign Johnson to a three-year, $16.5 million contract extension, I will learn in the closest thing to a biography that I will get that Johnson tends to "internalize his emotions." In other words, I'm not the only one to whom gender stereotypes may apply here. It appears baseball is rife with strong, silent types. I'm still hopeful I'll form an attachment to the rookie third baseman from my alma mater, Ryan Zimmerman. Fresh out of the University of Virginia, Zimmerman is described by a rival scout in my Street & Smith's as a potential star, "a low-ball hitter" -- I have no idea why that's significant, but it's apparently a rare skill for a rookie -- with "a real good-looking swing."

Of course, I know the player on whom everybody's hopes are pinned is Alfonso Soriano, the four-time all-star slugger and second baseman from the Texas Rangers who, as spring training begins, is in a standoff with the Nats because he doesn't want to move to left field. On this day, he's out of town, representing his native Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, and it's just as well. I've decided he's the kind of overpaid egomaniacal pro athlete I disdain.

For the first few innings against the Cardinals, I am an eager beaver with the note-taking, while coach Bruce cheerfully provides a running commentary on the game's fine points. I ask why some black players have hitched up their pants to show their stirrup socks, and he explains that it's in tribute to the old Negro Leagues. Chris Carpenter, the Cardinals' pitcher, is one of the best in baseball, he tells me, and I watch during one inning as Carpenter quickly strikes out Johnson, then Zimmerman. Bruce explains to me that Johnson "struck out looking," meaning he struck out without swinging on the third strike. But by the fourth inning, my attention is flagging. If it weren't for the experiment, I'd be reaching for a magazine about now.

The Nats haven't scored yet. I look over at Bruce, who seems unperturbed. "Smooth . . . Nice play," he murmurs, when Zimmerman catches a hard groundball and throws it to first for an out. In the top of the sixth inning, the Cardinals have loaded the bases again, but the Nats pitcher ends the inning with a strikeout. "That's what you call getting out of a jam," Bruce narrates, and I think he's just stating the obvious, until he explains that it's actually a baseball term describing when a pitcher manages to extricate himself from an inning in which the other team has put multiple runners on base.

"I don't know if I like baseball. There's so much involved in the game, all the strategy and subtle little things that are hard to catch."

I'd think my own thoughts are accidentally spilling from my lips, but for the nasally New York accent. I turn around and see a little gray-haired guy in jeans and incongruous black loafers, kneeling on the concrete aisle next to the Yank's seat.

"You from New York?" he asks in a low, conspiratorial voice.

"Yeah. I wish I was there right now," says the Yank, with exaggerated gloom.

The little guy keeps up his quiet banter, and I'm guessing that he picked the Yank out during one of the big boy's broadcasts. I've witnessed moments like this before, when sports serves as a bridge between strangers. I harbor a secret hope that one side benefit of this endeavor will be to gin up that instant connectivity for myself. (After all, a girl has to relate, right?) Unbelievably, to me, anyway, by the bottom of the sixth, the Nats still have not scored a run. I turn to Bruce. "If it's a bad game, doesn't it seem like it should be going faster?" I ask. "It is going pretty fast," he says. "Really?" I reply. "It's been two hours, and there's still a third of the game left."

"The whole joint is asleep!" the Yank bellows.

In the ninth inning, I'm startled out of my semi-slumber when the Nats manage to load the bases. The Cardinals' manager huddles with the pitcher on the mound. Bruce tells me that after they confer, the manager will follow baseball tradition and hand the new pitcher the ball, pat him on the butt and jog off.

"Why the butt?" I ask.

"For good luck," he says.

"Why not the shoulder?"

He pauses a second. "I don't know."

The good luck pat doesn't work. Nats center fielder Marlon Byrd gets a clutch hit, and suddenly, incredibly, the score is tied at 4-4, and the game goes into a 10th inning. I'm starting to understand what Bruce meant when he said that in baseball, there's always reason for hope. But my optimism fizzles when the Nats make their third error of the game, giving away the winning run. I feel as if I've been jolted into action by the sound of a fire alarm only to be told someone pulled it by accident.

After the game, Bruce leads me to the fence near the dugout so I can try to get an autograph. The only autograph-seeking woman without a child in tow, I nervously squeeze into the crowd and tentatively extend my ball. The players appear dirty and dejected -- quite ordinary, actually -- as they file past. One takes my offering and, without a word or even a smile, scribbles something. Later, Bruce seems somewhat envious as he takes the ball and then hands it back. "You've got Jose Vidro there. That's kind of a big deal," he says, and although I was unable to match the face with the name, I feel unexpectedly grateful.

Before returning to Washington, we have dinner at Bernard's Surf, a cozy, dim restaurant in Cocoa Beach with lots of nostalgic Florida kitsch on the walls. Our waiter, a tall, fit Northeasterner in his 50s with bristly gray hair, tells us he's a Yankees fan.

"You like Nick Johnson?" I ask.

"Yeah, he was real good before he got injured. But I hear he didn't play too well yesterday," he says.

"He didn't play too well today, either," I tell him.

My first sports conversation with a stranger. That is the beginning and the end of it, but I swear I feel a tiny charge.

BACK HOME, I FOLLOW THE NEWS WITH DISGUST AS THAT SPOILSPORT SORIANO TRIES TO STEAL VIDRO'S SECOND-BASE JOB. I find I'm emotionally investing in the details of this soap opera: Soriano is the hot young(ish) thing, and Vidro, a 14-year vet with the Washington-Montreal franchise, is plagued by chronic knee problems. But Vidro is a three-time all-star himself and, unlike Soriano, a truly talented second baseman. Plus, he is obviously of good character, having signed a strange woman's baseball.

First, Soriano throws a tantrum, refusing to take his position in left field in a game against the Dodgers. The Nats threaten to put him on the disqualified list, potentially scuttling his eligibility for free agency (a huge financial windfall) after the season. It appears the Nats have called Soriano's bluff when, two days later in a game against the Cardinals, the $10 million stud takes up his spot out in left field. "I love this game. That's why I changed my mind," he declares. What spin, I think.

Four days later, when Soriano lets a ball sail over him in left field, allowing a run-scoring double, a coach suggests he may not be trying hard enough. I was starting to take the tiniest bit of pleasure in the sport, but Soriano's behavior is a turnoff.

By opening day, the Nats have six players on the disabled list, including three pitchers. This leaves their roster dangerously thin. (That is, according to my hometown paper; at this point I would not dare make a definitive baseball statement on my own.) The truth is, I don't yet know enough to dread a "thin" pitching staff. Instead, and maybe this will sound stupid or, worse, misleadingly girly, I am appalled at how frequently baseball players seem to be either laid low by injuries or playing through them. Maybe they should find a less hazardous occupation.

Post sportswriter Barry Svrluga quotes general manager Jim Bowden, referring to the team's error- and injury-ridden spring training season as "the most 'un-fun' . . . one nightmare after another."

And these people, with their stupid vanities and disobedient bodies, are supposed to make a fan out of me?

In late March, I start to question whether I've been imbuing sports fans with friendship-making magic they don't possess. Over lunch, I tell my colleague Steve about my first-ever baseball conversation with the waiter in Cocoa Beach.

"But with guys, that's where it also ends," he says. "It really doesn't get any deeper."

In 20 years as a baseball bystander, this possibility has never occurred to me.

BY THE TIME BRUCE AND I MAKE IT TO OUR FIRST REGULAR GAME OF THE SEASON, on April 12 against the New York Mets, the Nationals have lost six of their first eight games. This one at least promises to keep me awake. Last week in New York, Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez (noted for his aggressive fastball) hit Nats right fielder Jose Guillen twice with pitches, leading to Guillen charging the mound, bat in hand, causing a stir in the stadium and setting the stage for a rematch tonight. I read about it in The Post sports section the next morning, ensconced in my favorite black leather recliner.

"How do they get away with being such big babies?" I ask Bruce, marveling at what seems a glaring display of unprofessionalism.

He looks up from his cereal at the other end of the family room. "It's a macho intimidation thing," he says.

Guillen had been "crowding the plate," he tells me. This is when a batter sets his stance extremely close to the strike zone, he explains. The pitcher, not wanting to cede this precious territory, pitches aggressively close to the batter to "brush him back." In other words, it's all part of the game.

This appears to be yet another disadvantage of my estrogen-infused childhood. Men so often perform these strange power rituals, such as never apologizing, or deliberately withholding comment, and there are times when I feel like someone without a television trying to understand pop culture. But at least these sporting rituals are, in a weird way, more honest than the office variety -- in that everyone who plays the game acknowledges that it is all part of doing business. Also, unlike the games in my professional life, baseball players hold no sway over me. I can just call all the posturing silly and refuse to engage (which, come to think of it, I've done for the last 20 years).

Martinez takes the mound and, menacingly oblivious to the booing in the stands, proceeds to methodically strike out batter after batter. Before I know it, we're at the top of the sixth. I watch as Soriano, with pantherlike grace, runs with his glove extended to catch a line drive in left field. The ball lands safely in his mitt for an out. Niiice, I hear myself murmuring. Nationals catcher Brian Schneider singles in the bottom of the sixth, and then Martinez walks Marlon Anderson. Next, Brandon Watson bunts and sprints safely to first. Now the bases are loaded. Martinez's nemesis, Guillen, steps up to the plate, and I suddenly feel connected to the other spectators by an invisible electrified thread, and sense that it won't take much to trip it and send a charge. Martinez calls time and huddles with the catcher, shielding his mouth with his glove. When the pitch comes, it blasts through the air at an ungodly speed, and Guillen reacts in the only way that seems possible: by feebly tapping the ball to the Mets' shortstop. Bruce leans toward me. "Watch this double play," he says.

I'd like to tell you what unfolded just as I saw it, but the truth is it happened too quickly for me to follow. I'm told the double play is the closest thing in baseball to ballet. Then, just like that, it was over, and all the testosterone went back into the bottle.

THIS MIGHT BE A GOOD PLACE TO DIGRESS for a short examination of the intersection between baseball and gender. I know plenty of female sports fans, but I don't know one who gets truly bent out of shape after a lost game. But maybe they do. Maybe because I'm not one to bring up the subject, we never go there. I decide to go there.

My friend Elizabeth says her parents were Cardinals fans dating back to their Missouri childhoods, and she grew up in Virginia watching the triple-A Richmond Braves play. But even with a solid understanding of the sport, she didn't become a big fan until 1996, when she and her husband, a rabid Yankees fan, attended the World Series in which the Yankees unexpectedly trounced the Braves. She remembers being swept along in New York City's wave of euphoria and, thereafter, she began to note that when the Yanks or the Mets won, "people were nicer to each other on the subway . . . You really could see it affected everybody's mood." She calls it "heartbreaking" when the Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2001 Series. Even so, she never experienced a lasting malaise the way her husband does. "If they lost, I'd be bummed out, but then you'd move on with your day," she says.

Perhaps, she muses, her less passionate response is partly because she never played the sport. "I'll never understand it the way someone who has played it does . . . I'll never understand a four-seam fastball," she says, whereas her husband "can spot one right away."

Elizabeth is about my age, and you'd think girls growing up today might have much more opportunity to know baseball as only a player can. But my daughter Alex is 8, and her team is one of the few at her level in the county league that has girls on it. Soon enough, the girls will be encouraged to take up softball, with its larger and slower ball and shorter distances. Nobody seems to know why that is, and it strikes me as an anachronism. Later, I will read that the Women's Sports Foundation agrees with me. There's no valid reason girls should not continue with baseball, the national advocacy group contends, given that agility, timing, coordination, strategy and other skills are more important than size and strength in a baseball athlete.

According to a 2000 study sponsored by Major League Baseball of six big-city baseball markets, women said baseball was more family-oriented, accessible and had the best role models of all professional sports. Forty-seven percent said they had attended a game within the past year. But how many were really watching, and how many were just accompanying their men, chatting and flipping through magazines? The answer may be apparent in other survey statistics: The No. 1 reason women gave for attending games is "spending time with family and friends," rather than the game and its players. Most attended just one or two games, and 43 percent of the women surveyed could not name a single player on their home team. "The research clearly shows a disconnect that exists between what women believe about the game and their level of involvement as a fan," the MLB report showed. To increase the number of female fans, the study suggested promoting ticket discounts, adding Mother's Day events, hosting a softball exhibition game and continuing to tout the wholesome family fun of baseball.

Perhaps Major League Baseball just wants to sell more tickets, but if it really wants to turn women into fans, I have a suggestion: Promote baseball for girls.

ON APRIL 20, I AWAKE, SHUFFLE UPSTAIRS AND CHECK OUT THE HEADLINES AT THE KITCHEN COUNTER. My uncombed hair looks like a sheep's rear end, and I'm wearing red flannel pajama pants under my nightgown because it's unseasonably chilly.

"Sorry about your Nats," Bruce says, smirking, as I walk over to join him at the breakfast table. I know he's referring to the team's 7-6 loss to his Phillies the night before.

"Their pitching sucks," I say.

He looks at me with something like astonishment, but not exactly. "You are so hot!" he says, pulling me down onto his lap.

I used to imagine that guys lusted this way after gals who played pool. Who knew it also applies to women who watch baseball? But I've been paying enough attention to know the truth of what I say. The Nats' pitching stinks, and so do they. Only the equally atrocious Florida Marlins have kept them out of last place. But they still might be contenders for most injured. Guillen strains a muscle in his left rib cage; Vidro aggravates his hamstring; right-hander Ryan Drese injures his elbow. I halfway expect to see an ambulance parked next to the dugout.

I am not feeling a lot of sympathy for these underdogs. I imagine the season continuing this way for five more months, loss after loss, injury after injury. How would I ever feel passion for them?

Even so, I find a few things to admire. Take the Nats aging ace Livan Hernandez, who helped pitch the Marlins to the 1997 World Series title. There was something endearing about his pudgy waistline, the way he slouched and shook out his right arm before throwing a pitch. This is clearly a guy who doesn't take himself too seriously, yet is very self-confident. He's also willing to take responsibility when he screws up, a quality that's starting to seem almost as ubiquitous with the Nats as their injuries. I find it refreshing, even old-fashioned.

"I can pitch better than this. I know that," Hernandez tells Svrluga after giving up five runs against the Phils. Pitchers Joey Eischen and Mike Stanton join him in criticizing their own play. "I really take the way I pitch to heart," Eischen says. "I'll go home and think about this all night."

There are other things about this most American of sports that begin to strike me as intriguingly countercultural. The languorous pace, the profound absence of a game clock, seem almost militantly defiant of the multitasking rhythms of modern life. There is also the aversion to technology, apparent in a game against the Mets, when the umpire calls Soriano out at home plate because he couldn't see that the Mets' catcher had dropped the ball. In deference to tradition, Major League Baseball has rejected the use of instant replay, which was long ago adopted by other major and collegiate sports.

"The game is a people game," Svrluga quotes an umpire as saying. My husband, who has never worn a watch and still uses a paper day planner, tells me he approves. And I begin to understand -- having never bothered to inquire -- his passion for this game.

IN MAY, I CAN BARELY BREATHE. I am coming up against deadlines at work, and, halfway into the month, Bruce and I will fall in love with a house and buy it, even though our current house isn't ready to go on the market. So, between taking gasps of air at work -- Bruce also just started a new job -- I spend my weekends stuffing extraneous furniture into the giant storage container sitting in our driveway so that our house will appear spacious. There are moments when I think I'm going to come unhinged. Even so, I heckle myself. If I were really a fan, I'd at least be listening to games on the radio and following the news daily. Instead, when I have a spare moment, I flop down on my bed with a borrowed copy of Anne Tyler's Digging to America. Strangely, the novel's male protagonist, Dave, admits he no longer follows his hometown Orioles:

"Once you've lost touch with a baseball team -- its gossipy human-interest stories, its miniature dramas of heartbreaking personal slumps and miraculous comebacks -- it was hard to work up much enthusiasm."

It seems that at this time the narrative threads should begin to unravel for this fan, too. But, as someone once told me, baseball season is long, and there is always reason for hope.

ON JUNE 8, I HAVE THE CHANCE TO TEST MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL'S STRATEGY of promoting the sport as wholesome family fun. And I have news for them: This is not the way to attract female fans. First, any home economist could tell you that a family trip to the ballpark is a budget-breaking event (at least $125 for a family of four, with parking, non-nosebleed seats and food, by this mom's tally). Second, how do they expect a mother to be able to "attach" to the game when hawkers are tromping up and down the aisles waving popcorn, soda and Cracker Jacks in her kids' faces?

It's my birthday, and I'm spending it with Bruce, our two daughters and my mother at RFK Stadium, not because I've become a rabid fan, but because I feel obligated to keep trying. Plus, the Nats are playing the Phillies, and I can tell that despite the many times Bruce says, "We don't have to spend your birthday this way," this is really how he would like to spend it. The top of the first is a blur, as I try to garnish Olivia's hot dog while balancing three other hot dogs in need of condiments and a giant box of Cracker Jacks on my lap. "I don't want relish," my 3-year-old whines as I squeeze a packet. She will spend most of the game dissatisfied with one thing or another that I'm doing ( I want to hold the drink, Mommy. Your head is in my way, Mommy! ), while Alex will keep wishing out loud that the stadium television cameras would focus on her family.

During the bottom of the second, I try to observe the Nats' new starting pitcher, Mike O'Connor, on the mound. I've been told he might be just the kind of unexpected young star who sometimes crops up during a season. And I know from my reading that O'Connor, who was called up from the minors, has been a godsend to the Nats' shaky pitching rotation, allowing just three or fewer runs in each of his eight starts -- a statistic, I note, that now actually conveys something meaningful to me: He's pretty good. But there's someone else I want to see play tonight, the man who is the driving force behind the reinvigorated Nats, who've won six of their last seven games. I know from reading Svrluga that Alfonso Soriano's 22 home runs so far this season are the second-best in the majors, and he has hit the ball out of the park at least once in nine consecutive series, the second-longest streak in franchise history.

To read about this is one thing. To watch Soriano in action -- my first chance since April -- is quite another. I observe his wide stance at the plate, the way he flashes his red socks and juts out his slender hips as he restlessly twirls the bat, coiling his body like a rattlesnake before the strike. I watch how he flirts with danger, leaning far off first base so he can spring across the dirt for a steal should the opportunity arise. It does in the bottom of the fifth, and there goes Soriano, streaking to second and then practically pouncing onto home plate after shortstop Royce Clayton's double into left field. Oh my. I'm certain what I'm thinking now reveals a distinctly female point of view. Soriano is hot.

Bruce has been watching me watch Soriano. "You like Soriano, don't you?" he says.

"He's cocky," I say.

"He's quietly cocky," Bruce refines. He's right, of course, and that's what's doing me in. Contrary to my first impressions, Soriano is not some spoiled athlete who takes his gifts for granted. He's actually endearingly humble. He has really been trying out there in left field, a position he's never played before, and he's making progress. "I have to see the ball into the glove," Soriano says, discussing an error in a Post interview. "I have to learn a little bit more about the position." Soriano's teammates also adore him -- even his second-base rival Vidro, who has taken to blaming the outsize field at RFK for his batting slump, diminishing his appeal in my eyes.

In the bottom of the seventh, Soriano hits a homer deep into left field, and I can feel my heart quicken. The sky blazes with fireworks. The game ends in a 5-2 Nats victory. The crowd is exuberant. "I got through eight innings, and I didn't get bored," my daughter Alex declares. Me, too, I am thinking.

WE KNOW THE MARKET HAS TAKEN A TURN SOUTH, but somehow we are still shocked when our house fails to sell in two weeks, then three weeks, then four. In between madly cleaning up for showings, I vibrate with anxiety. What will we do if the house doesn't sell by September, and we have to pay two hefty mortgages?

I'm surprised to find that with all that's going on, because of all that's going on, Soriano becomes a delicious distraction. In mid-June, the Nats slide into another losing streak. But even a short-lived batting slump fails to dim Soriano's shine. In early July, fans elect him to start in the outfield at the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh, the only Nat on the team. "He's given us energy," Manager Frank Robinson says. "There's not one day that that guy doesn't come in with that upbeat attitude." How, then, I wonder, can they even begin to consider trading him? How can a couple of young prospects be worth surrendering that kind of star power, especially for a team that has so little? Soriano has the charisma that makes Denzel Washington stand out on the big screen. He sizzles. I know there's something else behind my passion for Soriano, a version of the loyalty I feel toward Robinson, whose future with the team is also uncertain, for different reasons. Soriano may not be African American, but like Robinson, he's among the best in the sport, and he's still black, like me. Throughout the season, I've observed with equal measures of curiosity and chagrin just how white a sport baseball is. The sidewalks approaching RFK stadium are lined with African Americans hawking tickets and hats, but inside the stadium, I can pick out the black fans one by one. (A Washington Post poll conducted in mid-July reported that twice as many whites as blacks in the District said they had attended at least one Nationals game.) The Nats' plump eagle mascot and even so much of the music have a Garrison Keillor Middle America corniness about them. Granted, so much about baseball seems out of step with the times. Yet I find myself wondering how the Nationals plan on building a fan base in a majority-black city without at least giving a nod to 21st-century diversity. I do not consider myself a tough case, bicultural as I am, having grown up in a majority-white suburb and being the wife of a white baseball fan. Nonetheless, there's an obstacle here, one I can't will away.

As the Soriano drama reaches a peak, I invite my cousin's husband, Keith, to watch a game with me, and we commiserate. "They need stars like Soriano for the kids, so they can identify with them and want to be like them," Keith says. "That's how you grow fans."

In mid-July, Svrluga writes a story about Soriano that makes me swoon. "I want to stay here and build something from this group that we have," the slugger says. "I don't want to go to another place."

I learn that Soriano has lived the life of a sports vagabond, leaving the Dominican Republic to play in Japan, then moving to New York, then Texas, then on to Washington, "from third base to shortstop as a teenager, then from shortstop to second as a 25-year-old . . . his head spinning the whole while," according to Svrluga.

"When I leave, because they trade me to Texas, I had to get comfortable," Soriano tells him. "I got comfortable with Texas, and then they trade me here . . . And now, I feel comfortable here, with new friends. That's the tough part, making new friends. You never know who likes you, who no likes you."

As I read, Soriano becomes more than a superb athlete and sex symbol, more, even, than a man of apparent good character. He becomes a vulnerable human being who, like me, just wants someplace comfortable to call home.

I decide I will be furious if the Nats let Soriano go. I vow that I will end my flirtation with fandom right then and there.

FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE JULY 31 TRADE DEADLINE THAT WILL DECIDE SORIANO'S FUTURE, Tom and I go to see the Nationals play the San Francisco Giants. This is my first day game, and even though I'm doing research for my story, I feel a little sheepish about walking into a baseball stadium on a gorgeous summer work day. It also feels really good. Meanwhile, Tom is displaying that same barely contained boyish enthusiasm I often note in Bruce during our excursions. At one point, the man will put his ball cap on backward to spur a rally. It reminds me of when Alex puts her pajamas on inside out to bring on a snow day. In much the same way, I'm finding these particular male rituals are rather, well, cute.

Soriano leads off the game with a home run. Blam. In the bottom of the third, Zimmerman hits a two-run single that gives the Nats a 3-1 lead. Tom and I head toward the mezzanine level to check out the new, more upscale food, among the improvements Ted Lerner, whose ownership of the Nats just became official, has made to boost attendance. We're impressed by the amount of crab in the crab cake, but the cashier is surly, there's no tartar sauce, and, perhaps reflecting concern about litter, there are no tops on our Pepsis, which makes things tricky back in our seats. We decide to come up with a list of non-negotiable demands for the Nationals' new owners if they want to attract new fans. First, Tom suggests replacing the current announcer with a radio announcer, who can really explain what's going on. What a brilliant idea! Early on in my tutelage, I listened to the radio while watching a game live, and it really boosted my baseball savvy. But why wouldn't Major League Baseball already have thought of improving the announcer? "People want to experience baseball in their own way," Tom explains. "It's tradition." That word again.

By the seventh inning, the Giants and Nats are again tied at 3-3. Zimmerman starts the inning with a walk. This is where Tom puts his hat on backward for the rally.

Maybe it works. The Nats load the bases; then Johnson hits a drive into right field for two runs, followed by an Austin Kearns single to give the Nats a 6-3 lead. In the top of the ninth, Chad Cordero gives up two runs to the Giants, cutting the Nats' lead to 1. Tom and I stand and start clapping with the rest of the crowd as Cordero takes on the next batter. Strike one . . . Strike two . . . Strike three . . . He's out! Fireworks streak white across the blue sky to celebrate the Nats' sixth improbable win in a row, and Soriano has led the way in the streak with four doubles, a triple and two homers, scoring at least once in every game and twice in four of them.

The next day, I find an ally in Post columnist Tom Boswell. Soriano "has elevated his game so high, and become so beloved by his teammates and professed to like his new team and town so much," Boswell writes, "that the Nationals suddenly confront a truly confounding question: Why on Earth would you trade this guy at all?"

Didn't I say that already?

BY AUGUST 1, OUR HOUSE HAS BEEN ON THE MARKET FOR SIX WEEKS, and our spending is barely perceptible -- leftovers, anyone? -- as we prepare for the possibility of paying two mortgages. In my misery I can at least be grateful that the Lerners are holding on to Soriano. The Nats are smart to listen to their fans. I'm not necessarily saying I am one. But even if I were, the rest of the month would try me.

The Nats lose one series after another. Their play is sloppy, their luck miserable. Soriano may be on track to become the fourth player in history to reach 40 steals and 40 homers in one season, and Zimmerman to being the Next Big Thing after scoring five runs against the Phillies on August 18, but two players hardly make a team.

But forget the Nats. With the Soriano drama resolved, at least temporarily, all I can think about is the house. By mid-August, Bruce and I decide the only way to escape this nightmare is to drop our asking price lower than we ever intended. At least it works. Just before Labor Day weekend, I manage the family's move. The movers stay till 10 p.m., and by then I have done so much shoving and stuffing and taping and marking and gesturing and grimacing that I feel like a doll whose limbs are detached from its torso. But we're in the new house just in time for the start of the school year, even if we do need a scout to find the bathroom.

On the Sunday before Labor Day, my cousin-in-law Keith and I attend a Nats game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. After their long dive, the Nats are again on the upswing. In just the past three days, they've come from behind to win three games in a row.

"When you're not happy with the big picture in baseball, you take it series by series," Keith counsels me, as he cracks open a peanut. He goes on to say that you can also stay hooked by focusing on the achievements of individual players, and my love affair with Soriano comes to mind. If your own stars disappoint, and you're a real fan, you can enjoy watching the other team's. "If somebody makes the Hall of Fame, you can talk about the times you saw him play," Keith says.

Keith tells me he came by his love of baseball while growing up off Alabama Avenue in Southeast during the days of the expansion Washington Senators, who reigned from 1961 to 1971. He's just a few years older than I am, but as a city resident and a kid who played baseball, he claimed the Senators in a way I never did, following games on the radio and trying with his friends on the neighborhood dirt lot to imitate the play of the great African American stars of the time, such as Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. Keith laments the fact that there are now just a relative few native-born black superstars to draw new black fans to the game.

As Keith talks, the Nats founder on the field. By the eighth inning, they're losing 3-1 and have managed to hit only three balls past the infield. But once again, the Nats make a rousing comeback, consummated when Austin Kearns smashes a two-run double to win the game 5-3. I stand and cheer with the rest of the crowd, impressed by the Nats' display of mettle. "The thing I like about the Nationals is that they're a scrappy team, and they play hard every game," Keith tells me. He says this as though he knew all along that the Nats would pull off such a dramatic feat, making them the first team since the Giants in 1923 to come from behind and win four straight games, each after lagging by at least two runs at the end of seven innings.

Cliches are by definition unoriginal. But every now and then the simple truth of one -- like this thing about baseball and hope -- hits you as though someone had written it across the sky for your eyes alone.

THE NATIONALS' HISTORIC WINNING STREAK ENDS IN THEIR NEXT GAME, and the last few weeks quickly begin to feel like a final, rain-drenched slog through the mud at the end of a very long hike. Even Soriano's remarkable achievement on September 16 of reaching 40 homers and 40 steals in one season, in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers, fails to improve my mood much. Then, on September 23, Nick Johnson fractures his femur in a gruesome collision with another player. Seven days later, the Nationals announce that they are letting manager Frank Robinson go. I attend the Nats game that night against the Mets with my friend Elizabeth. The Nats' play reflects the team's collective state of mind. It's the 161st game, my last, and, for the first time, I leave before it's over. The Nats are getting pummeled, and I just can't bear to watch it anymore. I wonder what Robinson must be feeling. I wonder, too, if my own distress means I might be something of . . . well, let's not exaggerate here. I'm not truly upset. I'm also bored. But maybe I am a small one. A fan.

Over the last few weeks, though, Bruce has been showing me just how remote I am from the mark I set for myself at spring training. By some accident of nature -- as of September 10, the Phillies were just one game shy of losing half the time -- his team still had a shot at becoming the National League's wild card team. Their fate had come down to series against the Nats at RFK and the Marlins in Miami.

Bruce was stretched out on his side of the bed glued to the radio coverage of the first game of the Nats vs. Phils series at RFK, when I came in to ask him if he would pick up my sister from the Metro five minutes away.

"Why do I have to do it?" my usually helpful husband snapped at me. Later, he explained that the Phillies had squandered 11 hits and were about to let the Nats rally for a 4-3 win. That's when Bruce made his grumpy exit to the Metro. "For me, this game pretty much ended the season," he said.

But there must have been a little candle of hope glowing in his heart after the Phils beat the Nats the next night. We'd planned to Metro from work to see the third game in the series on September 28, but it was raining mightily outside, and the game was being delayed.

"Let's just wait and see how it goes," Bruce suggested, as we spoke by phone about what to do. I watched as sheets of water slipped down my office window.

This is where the wannabe fans separate from the real ones, I thought. The idea of sitting on a wet seat into the wee hours on a work night to see two bad teams play each other held no appeal, at all. Then, praise the thunder god! It kept raining, and we had a nice dinner out instead. The game did come off, at 11:32 p.m., and my husband's last spark of hope was crushed by a 3-1 Nats win. He barely tuned in to the Marlins series.

Back in the days when my stadium experience consisted of flipping through magazines in the stands, I would have snorted at his air of defeat. But by this point in my course of study, I understood that his funk wasn't so trivial. There were layers to his baseball allegiance I had never fully considered. For the first time, he tells me about the first game he saw with his dad, at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia, when he was about 10 or 11.

"Connie Mack was an old place surrounded by brownstones and small businesses. Inside, after pushing through the turnstiles, it was cool, dark and damp. Maybe it was the contrast of coming inside from the bright sun, but it just felt very dim and somewhat mysterious. I have very strong memories of how the place smelled -- like the steam that rises from the stainless steel hot dog boxes carried by the vendors, and even more so like cigars. I think Philadelphia was once a big cigar town, and I loved the permanent cigar smell that had somehow been absorbed into the cement, steel girders and wooden seats.

"I remember my dad being business-like about us following the overhead signs through the dank corridors to our seats . . . And then there was a moment when we turned from the darkness and chaos of the concourse and walked down the tunnel toward the seats when I was simply overcome. When we first began walking down the tunnel, the field was a distant rectangle. Yes, it was emerald green. But the thing was it was so bright and so soothing and such an oasis -- from at least the innards of the ballpark and gritty North Philadelphia, but maybe from everything. I don't know. It was like taking a walk in the woods and discovering an unspoiled pond or meadow. It just seemed so beautiful. And there was a strong feeling of privilege to all this. I don't mean that in a race way or a class way at all. But it just felt like, I can't believe someone actually built this place, and I'm actually allowed to come in here and watch."

And there's something else, something I am afraid to inquire about too much for this story. After college, Bruce worked as a newspaper reporter for a small paper in Greeley, Colo., while his brother, Sam, known to everyone as "Bo," studied for his PhD in counseling psychology at the University of Northern Colorado. Two men of gentle spirit and the only brothers in a family of five children, they grew even closer during those years, and baseball helped bind them tight. Every March, they'd round up some friends and head down to spring training. Our trip to Melbourne was Bruce's first to spring training since Bo had died suddenly two years before, at 51. We had just brought my husband's 82-year-old father, suffering from dementia, down from Philadelphia to an assisted living home near us. The two men with whom he most shared his passion for baseball, gone. And there he was, stuck with a wife who thought she couldn't have cared less.

After my season of striving to become a fan, this is no longer true. I don't know if I will ever collapse in despair if the Nationals lose a close game. But Bruce and I now have a share in season tickets, and when we go, I won't be flipping through magazines. I may even feel a stake in it all.

Soriano, seduced by the Cubs, will not be waiting for me, yet my mind still stirs with the possibilities.

Sydney Trent, the Magazine's deputy editor, can be reached at trents@washpost.com. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon .