I played a very little bit of baseball early on; we used to get up games in the recess field of the school near my house in the summer, and I participated in a low-key Little League game near my grandmother. I was lucky to attend a girl’s school where we were all expected to play sports, before Title IX normalized sports for girls, so I played a season or two of softball. Later I played briefly on a women’s softball team in my twenties.

I’m surprised to realize I did all that, now that I look back, honestly. I didn’t think I did that much. Baseball was just around, like air or clouds. You didn’t make a big deal of it.

I followed the Phillies a bit starting in 1980, when I moved back to Philadelphia from Connecticut. It was just lucky that was the first year they won the World Series. Mike Schmidt did a book-signing at the bookstore where I was working; he was a ravaged-looking, grouchy guy with a mustache; I didn’t care much about him one way or the other. There were some other legends on that team, and they pretty much defined the team for me going forward. Pete Rose wasn’t yet known for his gambling problem and Steve Carlton wasn’t notoriously crazy. Larry Bowa wasn’t an angry asshole.

There was a parade down Broad Street. And I got on with my life. My kid was born in 1982, I went to graduate school and moved out of the city. I got a career, took care of my mother when she got Parkinson’s, and eventually we moved back into the city. Occasionally, I dipped back into watching baseball. I was fond of Shane Victorino and Carlos Ruiz.

After my husband got diagnosed with cancer, and as he approached the end of his life, I cast about for ways we could hang out together. He liked watching television, and I didn’t. His taste in series television made my teeth hurt, and he didn’t like my shows. We settled on baseball. It was late summer when things got bad, and the Phillies were again in contention for the World Series, so it worked out perfectly. We watched the green grass, the blue sky, the shifting, chanting crowds, and the little figures on the field, and listened to the affable announcers bantering endlessly over the occasional hit. Because baseball is a long pastoral ode, interrupted by moments of unexpected frenzy.

Just before he died, they won one of the series games, and I remember after he died walking around in the city crying because I was so grateful to Bryce Harper for doing a good job.

They didn’t win, but my husband died before they lost, so he never knew.

I am on my own now, and have been for three years, and I just signed up for Phillies broadcasts. I got rid of our big televisions a long time ago, so I watch and listen on my little MacBook Air and my living room speakers. As a result, I can barely make out what the announcers are saying, and I can’t really see the game.

Mostly the announcers are trying to find different ways to explain how players can hit the ball, or how pitchers are dealing with the strike zone. It doesn’t matter. It’s just patter. Just soothing talk. it’s the grass, the sky, the field, the crowd. It’s players who will be traded or who will retire just as soon as I figure out who they are (I loved Ranger Suarez, and I am sad he’s not there any more). I don’t even care if we win.

It’s company, that’s what it is. When baseball is playing, I don’t feel lonely. Thank you, Bryce Harper. Thank you, Alec Bohm. Garrett Stubbs, Brandon Marsh. I appreciate you. Keep showing up, until it’s time for you to move on, and I will get to know someone else.