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TheDiscipleMD

When I married my wife she knew of my passion for sports, in particular, Baseball. Not only had I been playing it since I could walk but I passionately followed it and was an avid fan of the New York Yankees.  She however, had no knowledge of the game or for that matter, any interest in its past history.

And so it was that the summer we married ended up being one of the most memorable in the history of the franchise and certainly one that went down in the history of the game. In the summer of 1978 the Yankees made one of the greatest comebacks in history and ended up tying the Boston Red Sox’s for the division at season’s end. A one game playoff in Boston would determine the winner of the division. I was crestfallen when I found out that I had to work at the same time the game was being televised.

In the middle of my shift at work my boss came in to tell me my wife was on the phone. When I picked up the phone I heard my wife’s excited voice blurt out, “Bucky Dent just hit a three run home run and the Yankees are winning.”  I smiled, asked her what inning it was and thanked her for the call.  When I hung up the phone I remember stopping and thinking, “What a woman!”  Why? Because I knew it meant absolutely nothing to her, but she was watching the game on TV so she could tell me about it.  As silly as it sounds, for me at the time,  that call brought to mind a self-revised scripture found in the fifteen chapter of John.

“Greater love hath no wife than this, that a woman watch a game for her husband.”

Small gestures of sacrifice and kindness go a long way in making a successful marriage. It has now been over 45 years since I heard her voice over the telephone telling me about Bucky Dent. I can still feel the excitement in her voice and the joy in her tone as she delivered to me the good news.

Now, all these years later, when they replay that historic Home Run on TV,  and I watch Bucky run the bases, he never makes it home in my mind.  As he circles the bases, somewhere between second and third, he transforms into my girl, and I see her face, and I hear her voice, and a smile comes to my face because, once again, I feel her electricity in the air! And I fall in love all over again with the girl that I chose to marry!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ‘ULTIMATE WOMAN!’