Fathers and Sons

Baseball is fathers and sons. Football is brothers beating each other up  in the backyard, violent and superficial. Baseball is the generations, looping backward forever with a million apparitions of sticks and balls, cricket and rounders, and the games the Iroquois played in Connecticut before the English came. Baseball is fathers and sons playing catch, lazy and murderous, wild and controlled, the profound archaic song of birth, growth, age, and death. This diamond encloses what we are.

- Donald Hall, Fathers Playing Catch With Sons

When I was little the high point of every day was waiting for my dad to get home, waiting for dinner to end, and going outside to play a three inning game of tennisball in the side yard.  The field had about 30 degrees of fair territory, a ball over the street about 100 feet away was a home run (despite the fact that we had a fence), singles weren't allowed because home to first was only about 40 feet, if a ball hit the trees that provided a canopy over the field it was played as a clean fly ball, and yet it felt just like a big league park.  My dad has had multiple knee surgeries (3? 4?), was probably always pretty tired, and yet would seemingly always come out to play with us, providing the nightly counterpart to the Lakewood Vultures, a star-studded team with perennial .800 hitters Michael and Will Streit.  He would always jump out to an early lead, unless his teammate Stuart prevented him from doing so due to the lack of power that a 3 year old can bring to the table, and yet we would always manage to come back and win in a series of upsets that I'm surprised 30 for 30 didn't jump all over.  Those games forced me to hit line drives up the middle, they forced me to play quickly in the field, they taught me to never give up (even after Dad lined a tennis ball square off of my forehead), they gave me an appreciation for the way that the air feels when (and only when) the sun is at the horizon in the middle of summer, that cool humidity that can only be described by the realization that Mother Nature herself must be getting chills by watching the sunset, and they gave me baseball, my first love.

This past Sunday, Fathers Day, for the first time in probably 12 years, all four of us went out to play again.  It was noon this time, at a local Little League field, with a softball (and singles allowed).  We were out of shape, it was hot, we were lacking in the enthusiasm that can only come out of little boys, and it couldn't have been more perfect.  For that hour, we were sent back to those sweet summer nights.  Any normal family would have tossed the ball around and taken a little batting practice, but before we even put down the bases we had decided on playing 2-on-2, just like the old days.  There was Dad running as hard as he could out of the box, Michael wiping out as he rounded first (caused, of course, by hustle and not a lack of coordination or cleats), Stuart throwing out runners from center at depths that may have been home runs at the Polo Grounds... we kept playing to win, even when the circumstances should have been screaming "THIS DOESN'T COUNT, IT DOESN'T MATTER.  WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO YOURSELVES???"

In the past 48 hours, I've realized that it wasn't that field or those games that taught me to hit line drives, that wrapped Nature's cool blanket around my shoulders, that showed me a world that only ballplayers can really understand.  It was Dad.  The same man who taught me to work hard, to take a blue-collar mentality into everything, to play to win, to not make excuses, and to love the people around me, and I can't thank him enough for that.

On Sunday, I made a catch on the run behind our minivan in the parking lot in deep left field that I'd like to describe as Willie Mays-esque, but it was probably closer to routine, but after we got home, Dad told me a story that I don't think I'd ever heard before.  It was short, it was inconsequential except for its relation to the catch in left that I'd made, and it may not seem like much, but to me, it was huge.

Dad smiled and started off, "Ya know, that catch reminded me of one time when Will was really little.  We were playing in the yard and somebody hit a deep fly, Will wasn't wearing a shirt, but the ball was going deep out toward center, and there was Will, running after it.  I didn't think there was any way that he could possibly get it, but he made it out there and caught it.  I can still see him running out there, shirtless, making that play." 

I may be stretching this, but I feel like that story is kind of a metaphor for what Dad did for me on all those summer nights.  Other kids at this stage in their life are running off, out of center field, backs turned, but because of all those lessons I didn't know I was receiving, I'm just going out to try to catch the ball that my Dad has placed out in front of me, everything he's done for me that I can only hope to meet.  It may look uncatchable, it may be long and it may be far, but I'm going to run out there and I hope I'm going to get it, and then I can turn back to him and laugh and smile in the sun.  And hopefully I'll make him even a tenth as proud of me as I am of him.

MoreBaseball.com

Baseball lovers:

Short post today, as 1. I need to work early tomorrow and 2. this info can pretty much speak for itself.

I'd like to introduce you to MoreBaseball.com.  MoreBaseball is in the building process, but as you have already been able to see if you clicked the link, it's pretty sweet already.  Basically it's a place (like this) where baseball fans, players, coaches, and possibly even umpires can meet up and talk about all the things that only we can appreciate; like the College World Series, awesome bat deals, and Reebok Pumps.  It also has a sweet forum that's just starting up, and because there's absolutely nothing wrong with shameless pitches, I absolutely think you should check this site out.

Playing the right way

A week ago today, on Letters to Pilky, I put my feelings on that punkass whiney little prima donna sonuvabitch why the hell doesn't someone knock him unconscious come on ref T him up just one time to shut his little pretty boy mouth Lebron James.  To sum up 400 words in one phrase: I think Lebron James does things the wrong way.  He's not something that our first generation, blue collar immigrants would be proud to watch.

Someone who they would have been proud of was Ken Griffey Jr.

The prettiest follow-through in baseball

Ken Griffey did everything right.  He was one of the few true five tool players.  He hustled in the outfield, he hit singles, hit doubles, drove in runs, and most importantly, he hit home runs without ever once being connected to the rampant steroid allegations surrounding him.  He didn't wear excessive bling, his names were never in the headlines for anything but being a great ballplayer, and the only seemingly cocky issue about him was that he liked to wear his hat backwards, which stemmed back to the days when he had to wear his dad's hat that way because otherwise the brim would fall over his eyes.

Junior departed from Seattle because he wanted to be closer to his family in Cincinnati.  He willingly played for a worse team because he wanted to be where his parents were, where his kids were, where home was. 

He was a role model in that everything he didn't say said everything about him.  He played to play and was noticed because he deserved to be noticed.  He wasn't a pop culture figure, he was famous for being a baseball player, and a damn good one at that.  Spotlight was never the intention for Junior, it just came as a result of what he did. 

In the summer of 2008 I was in Cincinnati during the last few weeks of Griffey's stint with them.  I can't remember who they played, I don't know if they won, the score, who pitched, or anything else that I would normally remember about a game.  All I remember is that I got to see Ken Griffey play.  Someday, when his slide into home plate in the '95 ALDS comes on TV, I'll be able to say that I saw that kid play.  I saw him laugh in the outfield, I saw that beautiful swing, I saw him pull a single into right field.  There aren't many athletes that have had that affect on me.  Derek Jeter is one, Michael Jordan is one, Brett Favre is one, Cal Ripken is one, but they come few and far between.

But the best part about Ken Griffey Jr, in my opinion, is that he was a team player until the end.  A year and four days ago today he called it quits.  He retired mid-season, realizing that the Mariners could do a lot better than a .184 batting average.  Now, a year later, Jorge Posada is complaining because Joe Girardi put him in the nine hole.

You've stayed with me so far on this, so I'm hoping that you'll be willing to stick out this strange analogy I'm about to make:

In my Environment & Civilizations course my freshman year, we learned about a cold-weather nomadic tribe (I think in Alaska?  Northern Canada?  Definitely not Russia) that had to constantly be on the move to follow it's food supply.  Because of this, old people were a huge hindrance.  At the same time, they were obviously valued and were the source of all of the young people in the tribe, so nobody was going to call them out on this.  The elders, when they could no longer keep up the required pace, would leave at night, no goodbye, no see ya later, no nothin, and would simply walk away until they died.  It was the most noble thing to do.

In today's me-first, reality show athlete world, seeing Ken Griffey do a similar thing when he simply didn't show up at the ballpark on a Wednesday afternoon last June was very cool to me.  He knew that he had accomplished amazing things with his career, but he also knew that his time was up.  He didn't fight it, he didn't pull a trump card, he just stood up and walked away from the table and hasn't looked back.