Jacque Mazey's pool table room in her Perrysburg, Ohio, home looks huge now.
Since late 2014, the boxes had been stacking up, boxes that contained afghans the 67-year-old retired medical assistant was crocheting for the Cleveland Indians.
She spent three to four weeks on each red, white and blue creation and estimates every 7{-foot blanket required one million stitches.
Just after Labor Day, Mazey reached her goal of finishing by this September. She and her husband, James, shipped 47 afghans, each box including a hand-written note, to the Indians' clubhouse.
Their UPS bill was $585. The cost if she'd sold them at craft fairs at her usual price of $125 was $5,825.
Before Friday night's series opener against the Detroit Tigers at Progressive Field, the Indians got a chance to pay back her unsolicited kindness. Mazey's group, which also included her daughter and 10- and 12-year-old granddaughters, were the team's special guests. Mazey brought along afghan No. 48 for Indians assistant communications director Joel Hammond, who invited her to their final homestand and coordinated the evening.
It will be the first game of the season Mazey has seen in person and the family planned to leave at noon, even though they weren't supposed to be at the ballpark until 4:30 p.m. Mazey was excited Thursday, but didn't want to imagine what the Indians might have in store.
"If anything does happen when I get there, I want it to be a total surprise," she said.
Mazey's love for baseball goes back to her days growing up in Oregon, Ohio. She and her twin sister, Joanne Gramza, used to play with the boys, three games every day until the street lights came on, even when it was raining or snowing. (Gramza is skipping Friday's game; she's a Detroit Tigers fan.)
Mazey went on to Clay High School and Davis College in Toledo. In 1989, she married James, who spent 48 years working in maintenance at the Toledo Blade.
While Jacque will watch any baseball team on television, James isn't nearly as devoted, although now he's as much of an Indians fan as she is. But Jacque said she has no favorite player.
"This is the absolute truth _ I love each one of them the same," she said. "The Indians are the classiest ball team out there. They act like they're family. When I look at our dugout, never ever do you see the same two people talking to each other. They don't ever sit the same.
"I watch other games and I can tell you these three are going to be sitting there, then there's a space, then there's two, then there's a space, then there's three. They don't mix it up. They're so cliquey. But not the Indians."
Mazey, who is left-handed, learned to crochet from her late mother, Barbara Parton, who was right-handed. Her mother declined at first, but Jacque persisted, sitting across from Parton where she could mimic her stitches. Mazey said she began "crocheting like a bandit" about five years ago and also makes afghans in football team colors.
While Mazey wonders if her mother knows the huge task she just accomplished, Gramza believes Jacque received affirmation earlier this week.
In the cupboard in Mazey's kitchen, the Pfaltzgraff coffee cups are perfectly aligned, with two in the back stacked inside each other. Five seconds after she softly closed the glass door, the two in back toppled over.
"Joanne thinks mom was letting me know she knows," Mazey said.
