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Kelly Parnell has a plaque on the refrigerator at home that kind of sums up her
life as the wife of a baseball general manager.
“We interrupt this marriage to
bring you the baseball season.”
In other words, if she wants to see
her husband, he can be found at Fieldcrest Cannon Stadium.
You see, Todd Parnell, the general
manager-vice-president of the Kannapolis Intimidators, works his rear end off.
On a normal game day, he might go in at 7 a.m. and leave the park at midnight.
And then, there’s all of those nights filled with public speaking engagements.
So when Todd takes 6-year old
Lindsay to school each morning, it’s a blessing, a little bonding for him. His
other daughter, Samantha, 3, gets her time in too, but it’s tough.
“It’s harder on the kids than me
because they don’t get to see their dad during the summer months,” said
Kelly, standing at the top of the Fieldcrest Cannon bleachers Monday afternoon.
“For me,” she said with a grin,
“by the time the season starts, I’m glad to get rid of him.”
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Make no mistake about it. Kelly
Parnell was joking when she said that. In fact, poking fun at each other helps
the stress of being apart.
“We keep our sense of humor,”
she said.
“How can she not have a sense of
humor married to me? shoots back Todd.
In fact, both chuckle about their
first meeting and Todd’s so-called struggles to win over the girl that stole
his heart.
It was July 3, 1990 and Todd, the
general manager of the Reading Phillies, was walking through the bleachers
shaking hands, doing his usual P.R. work. There, he came upon Kelly Price, a
group leader for a bank.
“He told me, ‘You’re really
cool. I ought to marry you someday,’” Kelly remembers.
It took about three months to get
her to go out with him.
“She played hard to get,” Todd
recalls. “She washed her hair more than anybody I’d ever met.”
“There wasn’t a lot of interest
there,” Kelly said, correcting her husband. “It probably took a good year.
But then, he won me over, what can I say? Timing is everything.”
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So now, she’s a baseball wife,
living in Mooresville. But the Reading native is never too far from her
hometown. Her family and friends won’t allow her to fade away.
“People still treat us like we
live there,” she said. “We got a toaster in the mail. Our mailman probably
thinks we’re crazy.”
Speaking of mailboxes, there was the
night Todd trudged home after another 20-hour day at the ballpark and found a
note from his wife: get the mail.
So he opened the mailbox and a
rubber hand was waiting for him.
“It scared the daylights out of
me,” he said.
Anything to make each other smile is
worth the prank. Because both wish the girls could see Daddy more.
“We get no summer vacations,”
Kelly said. “The only time we really get to see him is if we come to the park.”
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Which is fine with Mom. Fieldcrest
Cannon Stadium is much more compact than where Reading played.
“It’s so nice here, I don’t
worry,” she said. “The rugrats (Lindsay and Samantha) can feel comfortable
running around. Someone always knows them and knows they’re our children.”
That wacky sense of humor between
Todd and his better half leads to one final story — this one about wedding
vows.
Kelly Price became Kelly Parnell on
Oct. 31, 1992.
That’s Halloween, folks.
“I tricked her and got a treat —
I married a wonderful woman,” Todd said.
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Ronnie Gallagher is the sports
editor of the Post.
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Ronnie