By Cassidy Dover: "Through The Eyes Of A Child"

I am a proud mommy tonight.

I just read my daughter a great book, "Across the Alley".  It's about a Jewish Boy and a "Brown Boy" who aren't friends during the day but at night they open their windows and are best friends.  It talked about the Negro leagues.  I asked her if she knew what they were.

"No mommy," Sheridan said.

So I explained to her that a long time ago White people and Brown people couldn't play baseball on the same team.  I told her they didn't use the same fields.

"Why is that mommy?  I don't understand," she said.  As I tried to hold back the tears, I continued to try to explain it to her.  "Why didn't they go and tell an adult they trusted that people were being mean for no reason?" Sheridan said.

"That was how the world worked back then," I told her.

"Mommy, so back then Coiffey couldn't be my friend because he was brown?!  What about in the summer when I get a tan and I'm brown.  Could he be my friend then?" Sheridan asked.

As I sat and tried to make this make sense to her, I was so glad that she couldn't wrap her mind around such an idea.  I thought back to times growing up.  I had a friend in college who was Asian.  One summer she was coming to visit me.  I had to go to work and I asked a friend to pick Jillian up at the airport.  When I described her I said, "She's really short.  She'll be well dressed, in a suit.  She's got brown eyes and a great smile."

It took my friends quite some time to get back to my apartment.  Once they did the girl who had driven to the airport said to me, "Saying she was Asian would have helped me out."

I laughed at the time.  I never thought of Jillian as Asian.  I knew she was Vietnamese and had been adopted as a baby.  However, that was not what I saw in her.

When I first met Ray, I didn't even think that he wasn't White.  I remember the first time someone asked me his background.  "Where's Ray from?" someone asked me.

"Florida" I said.

"No, I mean, is he Dominican, Venezuelan?  What?"

I had no idea.  I had known Ray for a while but never thought of him as different.  After that incident I started to look at guys as "Hispanic" or "Black" or "White."

Just yesterday I had lunch with some mommies from school.  One of the moms was Black.  We had all talked about when we were kids.  I told her I hadn't met a Black person until high school.  We talked about questions we had had.  I never knew if Black people could tan.  I didn't know their hair was different than mine.

I told the story of one of the times I took care of Ray's cousin and gave her a bath.  I washed her hair.  When I was done I started to comb it.  It grew and grew.  She cried and cried.  I ended up calling her mom and asking what I was doing wrong.

"Did you put oil in it before you combed it?  Did you start from the bottom?"

I had not done either of these things.  I didn't know I needed to.

From that point on it was a joke.  Ray's cousin's mom would say, "If you don't listen I'll have Cassidy comb your hair!" and our cousin would beg for her not to do that.

Earlier today, a mom brought me a photo from the kids' talent show.  In it was her daughter, adopted from China, Sheridan, and a friend who is Black.  I loved the photo. The girls looked so cute and so happy!  "I love the colors in this photo" I said referring to the costumes the girls were wearing.

"It's such a great multi cultural photo," one of the moms said.

I hadn't thought of it until she said it.  I'm not blind to race.  I wish I were, but I'm not.  It's just not a defining part of how I look at people.

Many times in baseball I read about how this team has mostly Hispanics or how there are more Blacks in baseball than Whites.  I have read of teams who seem to prefer one race to another.  Often fans can't see past skin tone to skill.  It's such a sad thing to read. 

We joke with Sheridan all the time that her birth mark is where her White and her Hispanic parts come together.  Tonight, when we were talking about the Negro leagues and the friendship between the two boys in the book, Sheridan pointed out her "White side" and her "Hispanic side" to me.  For her it was one arm on her right side and one leg on her left. 

How I wish our world could be seen in the people we like.  How I wish friendships for us all could be based on similar likes and dislikes and not on the color of our skin. 

When I called Ray to tell him what had happened he said, "We must be doing something right, huh?"

"I guess we are " I said.

Maybe, in reality, it's just that our world has truly changed that much for our kids.  Maybe this is one of the things that is right with the world now.  With so much to worry about with the world that Sheridan and her friends are inheriting from us, I am proud that one of those things I don't need to worry about is Sheridan getting caught up in race.

I pray that we all can have the naivete and kindness that I saw in my daughter tonight.

Thanks for reading,
Cassidy

Cassidy Dover has been a baseball wife for more than 10 years.  Her husband Ray, currently in the minor leagues, has spent part of 7 seaons in The Show.  Cassidy lives somewhere in America with her daughter Sheridan.  Right now, they're probably waiting for Ray to come home.