One Grieving Mother, Two Mariners Tickets and a Season of New Friends

On the last Sunday afternoon of September, Rhenda Strub was bundled up against the autumn chill for one final day at the ballpark, eating Cracker Jack and sweet and spicy pickles. Another baseball season was ending as it often does in Seattle: abruptly and too soon. There would be no postseason for the Mariners, the only franchise never to have appeared in a World Series. Yet this season, Ms. Strub, 71, found that the opposite was also true: Baseball can help heal a broken heart. After she lost her 27-year-old son, Wyatt, to muscular dystrophy three years ago, she retreated to his room and spent countless hours alone quilting and watching baseball games on television. The constancy of baseball helped to structure her days, but the loneliness only added to her grief. So at the beginning of this season, Ms. Strub bought two season tickets to the Mariners in Section 120, on the first base side, thinking she would regularly go with her loved ones to T-Mobile Park. But her husband doesn’t like crowds, and the rest of her family has busy lives. So she wrote a post on Facebook — with some trepidation, she said, because the “internet can be a cruel place” — asking strangers if they wanted to attend games with her.

This season ticket adventure is part of me finding my way back out — getting out of the house, being around people, and doing something that brings a little joy again,” she wrote. “Baseball helps me heal.” The post went viral in April, inspiring stories in local newspapers and on the radio. Her family worried about her meeting up with strangers. Random people also messaged her with their concerns, offering safety tips. But her inbox was also flooded with messages from people describing their own stories of loss. A child who died. The passing of mothers, fathers and partners. Failed marriages. And a shared love of baseball. “I had so many people contact me with remarkably similar stories,” she said. “They have had some sort of life event that left them feeling unbalanced to deeply grieving. And they didn’t really have someone to go to the game with but loved going to the game.”

By the end of this baseball season, Ms. Strub had attended games with about 30 strangers and found that the people she connected with needed her as much as she needed them. She built an online community, bringing together the people she had met in a private Facebook group, calling the project “Strangers to Friends.” If she couldn’t attend a game — she had to miss a few when her husband, Mike, had brain surgery — she handed off her tickets to strangers who had reached out to her but didn’t know each other. She said she was “gobsmacked” by the reaction to her post. “I have made so many friends this summer,” she said. “I have friends that will be my friends for the rest of my life.”

九月的最后一个星期日下午，Rhenda Strub 裹着厚外套，抵御秋日的寒意，去球场度过最后一天。她一边吃着Cracker Jack爆米花，一边吃着甜辣味的泡菜。又一个棒球赛季如西雅图的惯例一样戛然而止，而且来得太早。水手队是唯一从未进入过世界大赛的球队，今年季后赛无望。然而，今年71岁的Strub女士发现，事情的另一面同样成立：棒球可以治愈破碎的心。三年前，她27岁的儿子Wyatt因肌肉萎缩症去世，此后她退居到儿子的房间里，独自花费无数时光做缝纫，并看电视转播的棒球比赛。棒球的规律性帮她安排了日常生活，但孤独却加重了她的悲痛。于是，在本赛季开始时，Strub女士在T-Mobile Park购买了水手队120区一垒侧的两张季票，原本打算定期与亲人一同前往。然而，她的丈夫不喜欢人多的场合，家里其他人也都忙于各自的生活。于是她在Facebook上发了一条帖子，询问陌生人是否愿意与她一起去看比赛。她说，发帖时既有些忐忑，因为“互联网可能是一个残酷的地方”。

“这个季票之旅是我重新走出来的一部分，走出家门，与人接触，做一些能让我重新感到一点快乐的事情，”她在帖子中写道，“棒球帮助我疗愈。”这条帖子于四月迅速走红，引发了当地报纸和电台的报道。她的家人担心她会与陌生人见面。也有素不相识的人发私信向她表达担忧，并提供安全建议。但她的收件箱同样涌入了大量讲述自身失落经历的留言：有孩子离世的，有失去母亲、父亲或伴侣的，有婚姻破裂的，还有对棒球同样的热爱。“很多人联系我，讲述的故事惊人地相似，”她说，“他们经历了某些人生变故，让他们感到失衡，甚至深陷悲痛之中。他们其实没有人可以一起去看比赛，但他们一直很喜欢去看比赛。”

到本赛季结束时，Strub女士已与大约30位陌生人一同观赛，并发现她所结识的人同样需要她，就像她需要他们一样。她在一个私密的Facebook群组中将这些认识的人聚在一起，并将这个项目命名为“从陌生人到朋友”。如果她无法去看比赛（有几次因为丈夫Mike接受脑部手术而缺席），她便会把球票转让给那些曾与她联系、但彼此并不相识的陌生人。她说，自己对这条帖子引发的反响感到“震惊”。“这个夏天我交了很多朋友，”她说，“有些朋友会陪伴我一生。”