Point of View: I Can Only Marvel

Well,  I’m finished with the Pirates — for awhile anyway. I had called on Zeus to strike down Jake Arrieta with a thunderbolt, but the best he could do was hit him in the butt with a pitch by Tony Watson in the seventh inning.

And that produced a benches-clearing set-to that was fun to watch, but otherwise it was agony, pure agony. And that’s the way it’s been for Pittsburgh fans in recent weeks, pure, unadulterated agony. I went on to the GoPetition website the day after the Steelers had lost 23-20 on a Thursday night to the Ravens, wondering how many had signed the petition to reinstate Lou Reale as East Hampton High School’s softball coach (the count stood then at 236), when the first thing I saw was a petition demanding that Josh Scobee, the Steelers’ oft-errant kicker, be released forthwith.

Sure enough, he was gone by the weekend. In the N.F.L., as opposed to the East Hampton School District, petitions get results.

I had been feeling rather mellow that day, at least through the first half, by which time the Steelers led, as I recall, 20-7, but at the end I was in full panic mode, excusing myself repeatedly from the dinner table to “check on the baby.”

(Note: One good reason to live in California, and I can only think of perhaps one other, its bountiful organic food, is that televised games from the East are usually over and done with by early or late afternoon, or by 8 p.m. at the latest.)

Thanks to her parents’ oversight — and, for the two weeks we were with them in Temecula, Calif., to Mary — the baby, who was only seven days old when we arrived, is progressing wonderfully. And this I found interesting: In a recent column, written before we, or they, knew what was to be her name, the first word, which I’d lifted from Rilke’s epitaph, was “rose.”

“So, what did they name the baby, Mary?” I said after I’d handed the column in for editing.

“Mary Rose,” she said. Well I’ll be.

I’d forgotten that babies require constant attention, which left precious little for me. As time wore on, I wondered, idly, looking up from my reading (Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”), if I hadn’t contracted diabetes, or, at the very least, gout. My big toe was aching something awful.

“You don’t have diabetes,” Mary scoffed. “Peter said you passed your physical with flying colors. It’s all in your head.”

“No, it’s lower,” I said. And just at that moment, I swear to God (talk about coincidences) a big foot crisscrossed with stabbing red nerve endings appeared on TV. “See, see. What did I tell you, oh ye of little feet!”

Unimpressed, Mary and Johnna went back to their maternal duties.

Though it wasn’t just duty with them; it was pure, unadulterated love — the kind I can only marvel at.

When it came time to go, I said to Johnna and to Wally, her husband, “You’re doing such a good job with the baby.”

“Check her out in 17 years,” he said.

“A two-handed backhand and a semiWestern forehand,” I said, “and all will be well.”