Matt motors to first base at Sports at the Beach. Photo by Kristin RiceScroll down for new photo
Wow. That went fast, my week off I mean. When you are on vacation, do you kind of take your job with you? Not in a bad way really. While I was in Delaware at my son's baseball tournament last week I didn't sit around and obsess about stories or wonder what was going on back here at 1806 Robert Fulton Drive in Reston. (But, I really, really, really missed you guys a lot, honest.)
Because I am an editor and writer, a lot of things I see give me ideas for stories or remind me in a nice way of my work. I've gotten some really good story ideas on vacation
For example, we have relatives in California (my husband's side of the family, love 'em), in Berkeley up north and in Orange County down south, so we have taken a lot of trips out West. My sister-in-law used to own a Berkeley restaurant and is a seriously good cook. And she has a lot of foodies for friends.
Anyway, one time when we were visiting in Berkeley, we ate our way through some great restaurants, the fabulous and the hole in the wall, with equal pleasure. We shopped in the gloriously-overflowing produce markets and spent downtime paging through the San Francisco Chronicle food section. At the time I worked at my previous job, a professional association for daily newspapers, when it suddenly occurred to me that I could write a feature on newspaper food sections, how they are used as marketing tools.
I had great fun talking to food editors all over the country about how they used their sections to draw in readers for a story that was interesting to write.
Sports at the Beach last week was kind of like that. My son Matt and his teammates the Renegades, played a pretty good tournament. They finished eighth in a field of 20 baseball teams. They beat some pretty good teams and lost a couple of games where errors and no hitting doomed the result.
The boys slept in dorms with the coaches next door and they met kids from Ill., Fla, NY, Mass, and of course Delaware.
They practiced, played two games a day, and still found time for things like the pool, ice cream and the beach, which in reality was a half hour drive away. Georgetown/Rehoboth itself is about a three hour drive from Reston, VA.
The family members had a good time, too, putting up tents to shield us from the sun (some of us are delicate, OK?), cheering on our kids, eating funnel cakes from the snack bar (not me, though I was tempted). It was a nice week and the weather wasn't too awfully bad: read, breezes were blowing.
Star Spangled Banner at sunset. My friend Kristin, one of two moms on our team who are ace photographers, took this beautiful photo the first night of the tournament. Photo by Kristin RiceWhat, you may be wondering, does this have to do with my job? Well, a couple of days Matt's games were at 9 am and the early games started with the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The complex includes 15 or so baseball fields and when the national anthem played, kids, coaches and parents everywhere stopped what they were doing on each field and turned toward the closest American flag. The neat thing is that most people were singing, not just listening to the recording of .... "Who was that?"
As I stood there, while the music played and the flags flapped in the breeze, it reminded me of all the times in the past couple of years when I attended National Anthem Project events, including our finale event in Washington, D.C. in June. I realize the song will always sound different to me. Plus I find I sing it more often myself.
In a gift shop/welcome center a short time later, I asked someone at the desk if they knew whose recording of the song they used and he looked at me blankly. "Um, was it OK?" he said. "I really don't know." I said it was OK. I was just curious. Sounded like, I am pretty sure, Faith Hill. In 2000 she sang it at Super Bowl XXXIV at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Nice performance. I am pretty sure it was Faith's voice floating over those baseball fields. Not the Super Bowl, but a nice memory nonetheless
A few minutes later in the gift shop, I examined a baseball on which the entire first verse of "The Star Spangled Banner" was written. How'd they do that?
National Anthem. Playing ball, any kind of ball, probably forever intertwined. I don't think that is bad really. And we will keep reminding people who taught us all to sing and play the song. Right?
And if you have a moment, share your favorite versions of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a sporting event by using the comment section.
Enjoy the rest of your summer and I will talk to you next Thursday.
RF
