Arizona and the Yankee bat.

We just returned from a long weekend in Arizona, visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins. They have lived there for over twenty years now, watching their small town turn into a bigger town, and now they're watching it turn into an even larger town. I guess no matter where you go in the US, small towns are becoming obsolete as grass pastures and desert prairies get taken over by concrete. No matter where you look in their Arizona town, there is either a shopping center or a strip center filled with restaurants. (We felt right at home.)

We ate out twice a day, either for breakfast and dinner, or lunch and dinner. My aunt says that she no longer cooks because she's 84 years old and she needs a break. Plus, going out gives them a destination, something to do, something to look forward to, especially for my uncle (also 84). On any given day, one of their sons or daughters-in-law or grandchildren and/or great-grandchildren may join them, if they're not too busy with their own schedules. Being that we were visiting, everyone made it a point to join us whenever they could, which meant there were at least six of us, and at most twelve of us. It was like having a family reunion every day at a different restaurant.

My husband was there for the first two days, then he flew off to a conference while I stayed with my aunt and uncle. I could have gone to the conference, but didn't want to see Las Vegas again (especially because Barry Manilow wouldn't be performing at The Hilton last weekend. No Barry? Then no Vegas for me.) I could have just flown on home, but decided to spend the extra few days with my family out there. My husband was able to coordinate our flights home, so when his plane left Vegas and stopped at Phoenix, I was at the airport there and we flew home on the same plane to Houston.

While we were visiting, my uncle and aunt were talking about "the old days" at Grandma's house, and we talked about Aunt Dolly and her now famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) move to Florida. Grandma's attic was a treasure trove of all things good, bad and questionable from everyone in the family. One of the good treasures up in that attic was a baseball bat of my uncle's. When he was young, he saved up his pennies until he had enough money to buy a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He brought it home and his older brother (my Uncle Mino, now deceased) took it away from him and told him it was "too good to play with." Uncle Mino polished it up with so much wax that it became useless for regular play, and then he brought it up to the attic for "safekeeping" so his younger brother wouldn't "ruin" it.

The Louisville Slugger stayed up in the attic for years and years. Whenever my Uncle Tony asked for his bat, Aunt Dolly would tell him that she didn't have time to go up there and look for it. I don't know why Uncle Tony just didn't go up in the attic and rescue his own bat, but he didn't, and for all of these years, the bat had been either up in that attic or had been given away to someone else in the family. When Aunt Dolly moved to Florida, the bat was nowhere to be found.

So there I was in my uncle's kitchen in Arizona, listening to the story of that long-ago treasure of a baseball bat. I asked my uncle who his favorite team was, even though I knew the answer: The NY Yankees. True story here-- my uncle had tried out for the NY Yankees when he got out of the service years ago, but they couldn't take him on the team because he was one inch shorter than the height requirement for the team at that time. Uncle Tony was an amazing ball player in his day, and he's still an avid fan of the game. He still has the rejection letter from the NY Yankee baseball organization.

On the day that my cousin's wife drove my husband to the airport so he could catch his flight to the conference, I went with them, and on the way back, S and I went to the local shopping mall looking for a Louisville Slugger. We went to three sporting goods stores in the mall--- no wooden bats. How can you be a sporting goods store and not sell bats? At the last store, a clerk suggested we try a sports store on the other side of the valley, so off we went to try there. Thankfully, they had Louisville Slugger bats, and (wowie zowie!) they had a bat stamped with the signature of Alex Rodriquez (A Rod) of the NY Yankees, who happens to be one of my uncles favorite players now. The store had half a dozen of those bats and I checked every one of them very carefully, looking for the perfect one. The clerk asked me if I was buying the bat for my son. He gave me a funny look when I told him I was buying the bat for my uncle.

After I paid for the bat, S drove to Target and I got a huge red and blue ribbon to tie onto the bat, along with a gift card. I wrote: "This may not be your original bat, but at least it won't get lost in Grandma's attic." I hid the bat behind my back when we walked into my uncle's house. When I gave him the bat, he looked at it with such a look of shock and surprise that it took my breath away. Then, within five seconds, tears were streaming down his face and he was holding that bat and telling me that it looked just like the bat that he had bought himself so many years ago. (His original bat had been stamped with the signature of Eddie Matthews, a NY Yankee player back in the day.)

My uncle held onto that bat all afternoon. He stood up and swung the bat and said it was the perfect size and weight. And then he cried some more. I got more hugs that afternoon, I swear. My uncle just couldn't believe that I had gone out and bought him a bat. (And I couldn't believe that no one had thought to buy him a bat before.) My uncle showed the bat to his sons, and told them he wanted to buy a display case for the bat. His younger son is going to take him to downtown Phoenix this week, to look at lucite cases for his bat.

I told my uncle that I thought he'd want to keep the bat out, so he could hold it and swing it every once in a while. But my uncle says the bat is too perfect to be kept out "in the elements." The elements? He doesn't want it to be exposed to dust, to his two cats, and to the little sticky fingers of his great-grandchildren. Oh... those elements.