I was looking at the Atlanta Braves schedule, and I saw that our team, the Cleveland Indians, comes to town in late August. I made a mental note to check on tickets so I could take my son.
Then it hit me.
He won’t be here. He’ll have started his first year of college by then.
Of course, my wife would go; she’s long tolerated my following of the team I grew up with. But on this Father’s Day I’m especially reflective of the good things baseball has done for my relationship with my son.
The lifelong bonds between father and son require a good deal more than baseball, but baseball has helped us — it led to us spending hours together that we might otherwise have spent apart. Sometimes sons and fathers just need time together.
It started in that first season of T-ball, when he was just five and I was the coach. Like every father who ever played even an inning of baseball at any point of his life, I believed I was qualified to coach.
He quickly learned to field a ground ball and how to slide. (T-ball players slide at every opportunity; more often in one game than a major leaguer does in a whole season, as I recall.)
That T-ball season coincided with the inaugural season of a minor league team where we lived in Ohio. We went to a game almost every week.
And so he also became a baseball fan.
That first season at the minor league games, he’d ask questions, including one about why all the players didn’t play. To a 5-year-old T-ball player, who competed in a league where everyone got to bat every inning, it was a logical question. As the season progressed, the questions got more sophisticated: “What’s an error?”
He played each season after that first one, including this year. I’m unable to tally how many games I’ve watched him play. (But I’d wish I had the chance to go to just one more.)
We’ve played catch until it was too dark to see. I’ve hit him a thousand ground balls and thrown for hours of batting practice.
Over time, our shared love of the game led to several trips that only fans make.
We saw the Cleveland Indians beat the New York Yankees in the playoffs. And we made another trip to New York City so that we could attend a game in the old Yankee Stadium, (one of baseball’s shrines, even for fans who hate the Yankees, as we must) before it was torn down.
One of the first things we did together after moving to Atlanta was go to see the Braves.
There were times when I asked myself whether I was doing the right thing as a father by letting (and encouraging) my son to spend so much time around baseball.
Pro athletes these days seem to eventually disappoint. As role models, few hold up over time. What does a young boy learn from them, really?
And as far as my son being a player, I wondered whether it was worth so much of his time. When boys are about 12 or 13, it becomes clear whether or not a player has a big future in the game.
Instead of spending his summers at tournaments and practice, maybe I should encourage other things, I thought. A musical instrument? Summer academic camps?
But he preferred baseball — dugouts and spitting sunflower seeds with teammates — to almost anything else. Practice could get him out of bed on Saturday morning when nothing else would.
I saw the unexpected payoff when I uprooted him and moved our family to Atlanta. For a high school boy trying to adjust to a new school and a new life, baseball became a refuge.
When little else seemed to make sense to him, school baseball did.
On the field and at practice, he found a place — and a foundation for friendships and personal growth.
At that point, I knew that the summers of ground balls and batting practice, the weekends at tournaments, the money spent on tickets, had all been worth it.
This weekend, we’ll be attending the College Baseball World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s something we’ve always wanted to do.
It makes for a nice Father’s Day and another baseball trip together.
But it won’t be the last one. I’m not saying I’ve done this on purpose, but the two of us still haven’t visited some of baseball’s cathedrals, including Boston’s Fenway Park and the Hall of Fame in upstate New York.
Maybe next Father’s Day.
