This story originally ran in SB Nation on May 10, 2013. My section is broken out below.

Fenway on Mother's Day
When I think about my mom and Mother's Day and baseball, the first thought is an obvious one — in the past few years since I've moved back to Massachusetts, taking her to Fenway Park as her Mother's Day present has become something of a tradition, and she's warmly embraced all parts of being a Red Sox fan. She loves watching David Ortiz stride to the plate. She loves "Sweet Caroline." She loves wearing her Carlton Fisk t-shirt in Fenway's ancient seats and sitting in locked attention while Jon Lester stares in at the catcher. She doesn't have an ironic bone in her body; every joy there is authentic and true.

But when I dig a little more deeply into my baseball memories with mom, I go to a less obvious place. She's always liked baseball, peripherally, dating back to Fisk and Yaz and the 1970s Sox, but she wasn't a really serious fan until recently. But still, when I'd visit her at the grocery store at work as a kid, she'd have the baseball cards I liked set aside for me — packs of Topps and Fleer, maybe even Donruss. And in the summer, if I wanted to watch the Sox, the living room TV was tuned to TV-38 with little argument.

In 2009, I brought her to her first real game, and it was there that it all clicked; the Red Sox rallied in the ninth-inning that night against the Angels, Alex Gonzalez drove in the winning run and she was nearly delirious with excitement. And she told me that that was the moment she truly understood how great the game can be.

Before that, baseball hadn't been her thing, but she knew it was mine, and she was happy to let me chase that interest, first through cards and later as an adult and perpetually aspiring writer. She didn't always "get" the game, per se, but she does now. And she always "got" me. — Nick Tavares, infographic artist and proprietor of Saves and Shutouts.