Sports memories and many meals made by a loving mother

I returned home from spring training 10 days early because of the coronavirus pandemic. I haven't seen my daughter or been able to hug her since I left for Sarasota, with news that I'm going to be a grandfather. And I haven't seen my mother and can't celebrate her 80th birthday today beyond another phone call and promises that we'll be together again.

I've written about the many ways that sports influenced my relationship with my father, who passed away in January 2019, five months after his diagnosis of esophageal cancer. The love and respect were always going to be there. But he taught me so much and made countless memories possible, whether at venues or in the backyard or in front of the television.

Multiple televisions during bowl season. We'd carry one downstairs and position it next to the living room set.

What doesn't get talked about as much, and it should, is how many of my sports memories also include my mother.

She's the one who sat with me as I listened to Doug DeCinces' home run on June 22, 1979 that created "Orioles Magic." My dad, a middle school principal, arrived home from a meeting in time to hear the replay on the postgame show.

She's the one who heard me blurt out that, according to the radio broadcast, all of the Orioles players had come back on the field to salute the Memorial Stadium fans in '79 after a regular season game and instructed me to "turn it up." Which also meant that my father needed to turn down the volume on the TV.

My excitement was her excitement.

She's the one who sat with me on the couch as the final seconds ticked away in Game 7 of the 1978 NBA finals. She wasn't a Washington Bullets fan or an NBA fan, but she shared that moment with her son while everyone else slept.

She's the one who yelled, "We did it," as Cal Ripken Jr. clutched Garry Maddox's line drive and waved his glove over his head for the final out of the 1983 World Series. I can hear her each time that I watch the replay.

She's the one who, as the head teller at Maryland National Bank in Glen Burnie, checked the name of a customer who had just left the line next to hers, realized he was a Baltimore Colts offensive lineman and raced out of the building to get his autograph for me.

You have to imagine this beautiful woman, in her dress and heels, sprinting outside to chase him down. And her reaction when she looked in the back seat of his car and saw quarterback Bert Jones, who smiled and, as I remember the story, called her "darling" while also agreeing to sign. And you have to appreciate that she knew the name of an offensive lineman and was incredulous that the other teller did not.

She's the one who sat through a Saints-Dolphins exhibition game at Memorial Stadium while the city tried to convince the NFL that it was worthy of an expansion team. She's the one much earlier who teamed with my father to surprise me on my birthday with tickets to a Colts-Vikings exhibition game - my two favorite teams. She remembers how I almost freaked out when I saw Fran Tarkenton, one of my childhood sports heroes, come out of the tunnel near our seats.

My family listened to the Colts home games on radio since they routinely were blacked out and our hearts were broken when the team left for Indianapolis. But she's a diehard Ravens fan now, which has brought the rest of us a tremendous amount of joy and humor.

There's no need to find a seat for her in the house because she won't stay in it. She paces throughout the game and has been known to start washing dishes if the Ravens get off to a bad start. Whether or not the plates are actually dirty.

The language tends to be, but we're used to it.

She's the one who still gets nervous watching her DVD of the Ravens-49ers Super Bowl and flips out when the lights go out in the Superdome. She knows that the NFL did it on purpose.

My mornings include a quick check of the NFL Network broadcast lineup and a text to alert her if it includes a Ravens game, as it did twice last week. Dan Fouts was in the booth for both of them. She wasn't pleased then or now.

I love this woman.

No one puts out a game day spread like my mother. "Snackies," as we call them.

Her version goes well beyond the standard chips, dip, meats and cheeses. There also has to be chilled shrimp - the big ones, of course - and a slow cooker filled with meatballs. Somehow, it never runs low. I think it's bottomless.

There's also breaded eggplant strips and deviled eggs. Artichoke squares that can best be described as resembling little crustless quiches. A sun-dried tomato and cream cheese dip for raw vegetables. A warm clam dish for crackers or chips that resembles clams casino without the shell.

And then she serves dinner.

My mother is known to make a main dish, open the bottom stove and say, "Oh, I also made a pot roast." Because who doesn't love a side of pot roast with an entrée?

My father should have weighed 400 pounds, but he showed great restraint. He'd eat half a cookie, usually a homemade chocolate chip, and save the other half for later. We marveled at it.

I loved that man.

My mom was running low on chocolate chips one day and asked if I minded that she also tossed in a handful of white chocolate chips to balance out the recipe, which she usually doubles anyway. I replied that someone should throw a parade in her honor.

She also asked once if I thought there were too many chips in the cookies, since she tends to treat recipes as suggestions. No one, I told her, has ever filed that complaint.

My father always kept a bottle of vodka in the freezer for me. I wasn't particular about the brand because it was only used in cocktails instead of martinis and I was fine with the low-shelf stuff, but my mother scolded him for giving me "rot-gut."

Under orders to start buying the good stuff, he began purchasing Absolut and said he'd switch to Tito's or something else. Anything to maintain a peaceful household.

I should be toasting my mom today. She should be surrounded by her family for "wine time," clinking our glasses and remembering dad. We'll call her. Friends will leave gifts on her porch or order her dinner for delivery. Social distancing pushing us apart when we should be embracing.

This woman doesn't look her age, doesn't act her age. Doesn't know how to put herself ahead of her family. Probably because she doesn't have any practice doing it.

We'll be together again, with a lot more games to watch after the sports shutdown has been lifted. There will be more food to consume. More laughs. More memories to be made.

Until then, I'll keep cherishing the ones from my youth that she created. Embracing that can be done at any distance.