News-Record.com

I used to have a deal with my wife: I go to a concert with you, you go to a baseball game with me. It was a nice arrangement ... until we went to an opera. It was "Aida," with the lead role sung by a soprano on steroids. Man, I thought I deserved a hundred baseball games for that. Margaret disagreed (she insisted she suffered at least as much by sitting through most of a twi-night doubleheader in Cincinnati), but I told her no more operas for me! I'll bet the "Aida" disaster was 20 years ago. When she's gone to the opera since then, it's been without me.

But now, I'm giving in. I'll go to the opera - "The Mighty Casey" at First Horizon Park, playing next Wednesday and Thursday.

Thanks to UNCG for the brilliant idea of staging an opera based on Ernest Lawrence Thayer's stirring poem in Greensboro's beautiful new baseball stadium.

Just one thing: Who gets to count it, me or Margaret?