My Next Business: The Player

An entrepreneur discusses her dream of owning a baseball team.

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'I don't think I could have imagined this earlier -- I couldn't have seen myself owning a baseball team. But once you've owned your first company, you are forever changed. Anything seems possible. Even this.' The story of a company builder in love

When Joey Higgins wore penny loafers with soft yellow socks, a matching yellow oxford shirt, chinos, and Brut, I was useless in English class. For a girl showing early signs of becoming a pushy woman, he was a dream to dance with: no negotiation; he led. He was a championship quarterback on the football team. But more exciting to me, he was the star pitcher for the Bangor (Maine) Rams high school baseball team, and he was my boyfriend. Because he smelled good? Because dancing with him was so great, I remember it 25 years later? Because he made me laugh? Because of those yellow socks?

Naah. I was crazy about Joey because on the baseball field he conjured up the elements of ancient myth: the quest (for victory, records, excellence); the triumph of good over evil (us versus them); the steadfastness of the hero (charismatic and confident). And he was mine -- for a while at least. Eventually, someone else came along, with great legs and a driver's license. She had a car. He broke my heart.

But when I was 17, there was nothing quite as magnificent as watching Joey take the mound and strike out one batter after another. In between there was chatter ( talk it up, talk it up, you got it, take it easy, take it easy), butt patting, spitting, comedy, tension, and suspense. (What next? A bunt? A grounder? The long ball?) I liked nothing better than sitting in the stands and having my heart stretched in a thousand ways. That same year, 1967, I watched the Boston Red Sox play St. Louis in the first World Series that would break my heart. It was the beginning of a romance that was more enduring than the one I had with Joey.

I wasn't yet a feminist. I didn't connect the passivity of being a spectator with my role as a girl. And I was cursed with a girl's throw. I'm not proud of those things. I wish I could say that I always yearned to play first base or be a catcher, or better yet that I'd fought to try out for a team. I didn't. I was too well socialized. It was all vicarious pleasure.

I didn't really understand that until years later. I was in Vero Beach, Fla. -- Dodgertown. It was the off-season. I was attending a seminar. (Don't ask; there's no good reason to hold a seminar there.) One night I walked over to the ball field with a couple of friends. The field was empty, but the lights had been left on. The grass was Hollywood green, the air sultry and troublemaking. The students were rebelling in Tiananmen Square, and my heart was with them. The infield dirt was dark, unmarred, fresh. I was overcome with the impulse to run the bases. So I did.

I've always been a pretty good sprinter. But the endorphins kicked in, and for the space of time I sailed those bases, I understood what Joey must have known all along: This was joy. This was another consciousness. Home plate loomed too soon. The two guys with me were speechless. Not at seeing a woman run the bases -- but at seeing me run the bases. I felt a little sheepish but triumphant. I had danced on sacred land -- and it was sinfully sweet.

The summer I graduated from high school, I met the man I would marry after college. He drove a red Mustang and played second base and shortstop for our American Legion team. And he looked great in a uniform. David and Joey were friends, but they were very different. Joey came from a working-class family, was at ease with a crowd, and had a bonhomie that made him the center of attention at every postgame party. David came from a couple generations of land wealth. He was quiet and possessed a dry wit and an air of calm. It was that very mix of personalities that, I came to understand, made a team. The chemistry of a group of ballplayers can transcend or defeat individual talent -- that's part of the magic (in business as in baseball). Joey, David, and their teammates played every game with heart and passion. As Annie Savoy says in the film Bull Durham, "There's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring, sorta like sex."

In 1975, three years after David and I married, I moved to Boston to attend graduate school and lived within walking distance of Fenway Park. That fall I was in the stands for the sixth game of the World Series. Every Red Sox fan knows that was the game in which Carlton Fisk hit a home run in the 12th inning to beat the Cincinnati Reds. It was a hit to send the spirit to heaven. Voices joined in a primal scream of thanksgiving. I've taken part in standing ovations at a few great performances on Broadway; I remember London shows to take to my grave; and I wept when I watched Gregory Hines dance at the Joyce Theater in New York City. That performance at Fenway was just as thrilling.

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