THE BIG SWING

When her son, a lifelong sports fan, expressed an interest in visiting the baseball stadiums of Japan, Helen Schulman planned a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tokyo. The result was a home run.

WHEN IT COMES TO sports, I've always considered myself a good date. On trips to Yankee Stadium with my high school boyfriend, I happily drank beer and ate Cracker Jack-when he was watching the game and we weren't making out. In college, I toured the National Baseball Hall of Fame with a guy I was seeing. He'd agreed to drive me across New York State to Albany to visit a friend, and Cooperstown, his carrot, was simply on the way. I kept on being an amiable companion when I met my husband, attending his alma mater's big games. But then our son, Isaac, turned out to be "all ball," and I became a legitimate groupie. For years, I cheered at the top of my lungs at his soccer, softball, and basketball matches. (This was also a form of primal screaming, and much cheaper than therapy.)

Cut to last summer. Isaac was 24, and I was still a besotted mother. Summer vacation loomed before me-I'm a writer and an academic-and post-pandemic, I was eager for revenge travel. My son and I shared a dream of going to Japan. He was drawn to Japanese baseball, I was drawn to the culture, and we were both drawn to the food.

That is how I found myself in the middle of a ninehour baseball-palooza in the Isaac-heaven of the Tokyo Dome, Japan's biggest indoor baseball arena. We were both jet-lagged and culture-shocked, having arrived the night before from New York City, but Isaac was already in a state of bliss. He knows everything about baseball, and religiously follows MLB, college, Korean, Dominican, and, yes, Japanese ball clubs.