July 1, 2005

  • My Best Baseball Game Ever:

    In my day I was a pretty good baseball player . . . a
    catcher.  I used to think that perhaps
    the day I took a throw from center field and tagged a runner out at home, or
    maybe the day I learned that if a pitcher threw from a windup instead of a
    stretch after I’d made it to third base, that I could steal home (I did that a
    few more times after I learned that), were my best days as a baseball player.  Not even close.

    As the sun waned today my 16 year old daughter and I
    played wiffle ball in the front yard.  I’m
    pretty sure I won . . . she’s the one that had to climb onto the roof to get
    one of my hits.  As I watched this
    beautiful child pitch to me while we laughed in the setting Indiana sun . . . I realized I’d already won
    and played my best game ever.  A game I’ll
    remember long after those memories of stealing home from third base have faded.

Comments (5)

  • You're right! Your daughters - my sons, children, they are what make life so very wonderful.

  • I just saw your comment on Craig's involvement with the Kevin's balloon. Well, he was a bit surprised to find some of his work in that little museum. Had Kevin managed to stay in the air it would have been in the Smithsonian.

    I think Craig would agree with this post though, that his best work ever was/is raising our two boys. I always love when one of the boys is doing something just the way Craig would do it. I look over to Craig and I can see that he is tickled pink that his boys are like him. Usually it is something goofy like telling a corny joke or doing an old man impression, which they all think is just hysterical.

    Makes me think of that Louis Armstrong song What a Wonderful World.

  • now that is touchingly captured...

  • So much of the parent-child sports thing in America today is so twisted and evil (as so much of everything seems to be), and when I've coached youth sports I've seen that close-up, that I can forget that, wins or losses, championships or crowds watching, my favorite sports memories are my dad pitching to me in an empty Sunday morning parking lot and him smiling as I started to crank the ball over the far fence or shooting on me on a frozen winter lake and the laugh when I'd stop one of his real slap shots, and then, my son and I racing across an empty field passing a soccer ball back and forth, or that moment when he first figured out that he could blow past me if I was defending him in a weekend pick-up game.

  • my dad isn't the sporting type, but i do remember convincing him a few times to come throw the ball in the back yard. so much of my childhood is wrapped up in that little piece of grass.

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