My Fiancee the Sports Fan

This week started pretty normal for me. I planned on putting 40 hours in at the nursing home, I lost my weekly round of mini-golf by five strokes, our softball team lost last night, 26-24, after scoring 20 runs in the first inning, and I'm readying to attend a traditional May wedding this weekend.

Mine.

Four months has turned into four days, something that never seemed possible, and I now find myself in cold-feet mode as I weigh the good and the bad of turning Mandy Heldman into Mandy Fuhrman.

The good far outweighs the bad, which is why I asked her to marry me in the first place, but there is one thing that scares me.

Mandy hates sports.

A few examples:

In 2006, Mandy went on her high school Senior Class Trip, which included a Minnesota Twins game at the Metrodome against the Boston Red Sox.

The ’06 class brought their caps and jerseys, and Mandy brought her knitting. While she was knitting, the Twins turned a triple play…A TRIPLE FREAKING PLAY…and she never knew it happened.

“Everyone was yelling so loud, and it was hard to concentrate on my knitting.”

When Mandy and I were driving in the Twin Cities one weekend, I spotted a sign with AL MVP Justin Morneau. Doing what I now realize as the most idiotic, demeaning thing I could do, I asked Mandy, “Hey, do you know who is up on that billboard?”

“Mark McGwire?”

In 2007, Mandy and I went to a Twins game with some friends against the Toronto Blue Jays. We had won a Twins promotion and had seats behind home plate…BEHIND HOME FREAKING PLATE…and we were pumped.

My friends and I brought our caps and jerseys, and Mandy brought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Of course, Mandy was leaning her head on my shoulder as she read, so everyone knew that she was with me.

I was constantly jeered and heckled from behind as, “Hey, Harry Potter’s friend! Must be a pretty good book! Do you have to work hard for her attention?”

The Twins were down by six runs, and made a huge comeback in the eighth and ninth innings, sending the game to extras…where they eventually lost.

As we exited the stadium amidst angry-that-they-had-lost-a-thriller fans, Mandy asked, loudly, “So, who won?”

In 2008, Mandy and I were apartment shopping in the cities for when we get married, with later plans to go to Opening Day against the Los Angeles Angels.

As nine inches of snow was dumped on the Twin Cities—with twelve blocks to the Metrodome—Mandy became wet, cold, and cranky.

Not because she was wet and cold, mind you…but because her knitting was getting wet. (See above picture, and you can see she is carrying it.)

As she knitted a scarf so she could stay warm when the game was over, the Twins won a nail-biter against Torii Hunter and the Angels.

She refers to Johnny Damon as the man with the “best butt in baseball.” She hates the fact that I haven’t washed my softball pants in three years. She categorizes all sports as boring, and all they do is take my attention away from her.

As I reminisce, I find my feet getting colder and colder. But the more I think, the more I realize that her love for me outweighs her hatred for sports.

Why would she have gone to the games with me in the first place? So what if she brings Scattegories to my dodgeball tournaments?

As she walks down the aisle on Saturday, I will not see a sports-hating harpie who sees last-day-division-clinching and unbreakable-records-being-broken events equal to reality TV. I will see a woman whose love for me is stronger than her hatred for sports.

And that is saying a lot.