That's my girl

My silent vow before I started this blog -- that I would post only about baseball --went out the window the moment I babbled about A&G on here (Joey Chestnut? Talk about lowering my standards). So, what the hell. Might as well go all the way.

I'm missing my daughter right now because she left this afternoon on a four-hour trip to visit her grandmother, who is celebrating her 80th birthday. (Why didn't I go? And miss all the fun at work? What a silly question). The news here reminded me of the overwhelming thrill I had when I held my daughter for the first time. And she's done nothing to disappoint me since. She's smart, funny and as goofy as they come. But when it comes to baseball, she and I are nothing like this.

Every baseball-loving dad would like his daughter to like baseball, too. But it hasn't worked out that way, so far. When she was about 3 years old and saw me sorting cards, she asked if she could have some. I gave her about 50 dupes and she played with them for about two days, and then they sat in a drawer for about a year before I put them back in my collection.

We like to banter back and forth (she is an expert debater, which will be loads of fun when she's a teenager). When the subject of baseball comes up, I pretend it's the most important thing in the world (I'm exaggerating -- it's the second most important thing), and she pretends it's the most boring thing in the world.

She actually likes sports. She's one of the better athletes in gym class and when auto racing (ugh) or hockey appears on the TV, she seems intrigued. But when it comes to cards, she's into much more girly things like this:

Yeah, horses. Horses and taking care of horses and talking to horses and talking about horses. This is a Bella Sara card. It's a "magical place of beauty and joy." I don't suppose there's anything wrong with that, but the boy in me wants to stay as far away from this place as possible.

Of course, all these kids cards have codes at the bottom so you can play games online on the "official Bella Sara site." My Mr. Superior side looks at this as a money-making scheme, but then again, Topps and Upper Deck aren't going broke either.

This is a nintendo dogs card (actually, it's nintendogs, but I refuse to say that). These cards are part of the nintendo dogs game, one of the many computer games for the hand-held Nintendo DS device she has (it's pink, of course). These games aren't like the Mario brothers games or any other Nintendo adventure games. These dogs have adventures, but almost as often they have "conversations" that last forever, or you have to make food for the dogs or comb them or dress them or something. (Yes, I'm a good dad and actually play these sometimes).

If you have a daughter between the ages of 4-10, then you probably know all about Webkinz, the stuffed animals you buy that then enable you to go online to the Webkinz site. My daughter has more of these cards than any other. She has a Webkinz binder and four-pocket sheets. Before she got the binder, she borrowed some of my baseball card sheets. As you can see above "Zacky Zingoz" is the most adventurous Zingoz in Webkinz World.

This leads to some bizarre conversations in the car:

Me: What's his name?
Daughter: Zacky Zingoz.
Me: Zin-gauz?
Daughter (exasperated): Zingoz!
Me: Zin-gos?
Daughter (yelling): Zingoz!
I swear she changes the pronunciation each time, just to make sure I'm playing my clueless dad role to perfection.

Mmmm. Mizzleberry Jacks. Maybe they should start featuring food on baseball cards. Or maybe swatches of dried, dehydrated food that you can remove and pour water on and eat. Forget the jersey crap. Give me something I can use!

Anyway, the only reason I could scan these cards is because my daughter is four hours away. Otherwise, she'd be looking over my shoulder editing what I wrote. God love her.