With the start of each new major league baseball season, I think back to what the game means to me.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Father and son at a Los Angeles Dodgers’ spring training game in Vero Beach, Florida - circa 1982
Baseball with my cousins Rick (left) and Bob (center)
I can’t pinpoint where I was or at what age when I first held a baseball in my hand, oiled up a glove, or swung a bat. There aren’t too many photographs of me playing ball in my youth. One of my favorites is with cousins Bob and Rick Forzano taken on a diamond in their hometown of East Liverpool, Ohio. I’m maybe five. The catcher’s mitt I’m sporting is much too big for me, but I’ve got a smile on my face that says I’m having fun.
I’m right handed, but I batted from the left side. Dad may have taught me that, seeing how I was pretty quick, and knowing that from the left side of the plate you have a step or two of advantage over right handers to get down the line to first base. I remember Dad pitching to me at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. Home plate was in front of the garage. If I swung and missed or didn’t swing, the ball would bang off the closed door. On nearly every summer Sunday, I played baseball games with my cousins on that diamond. Home plate was in front of the garage, first base at the corner of the barn, second base toward the milk house, and third base near the fence that surrounded the farmhouse yard. I loved playing shortstop and would field ground balls and fire them to first, knowing that an errant throw could shatter a barn window and draw my grandpa’s ire. Talk about pressure. (Grandpa was gruff, but seldom angry.)
My dad was an outstanding baseball player.
My dad had been an outstanding baseball player in his younger years. He liked to tell the story of playing on a town baseball team one summer. He had forgotten his high baseball socks, so he wore his pants pushed up such that his legs were bare below his knees. His first time at bat, the opposing team’s catcher took a look and said, “Nice legs, Esther.” (Esther Williams was a world-class swimmer and an attractive Hollywood actress.) Dad didn’t say anything, but he proceeded to smash a couple of doubles and a triple in his first three at bats. On his fourth time to the plate, the catcher said, “Ok, nice hitting, Ted!” (The “other Williams,” Ted, was probably hitting close to .400 that summer for the Boston Red Sox.)
I owe much to Dad for helping develop my baseball hitting, throwing, and fielding skills. He provided as much encouragement as instruction, and I never felt any pressure from him to do well. He spent hundreds if not thousands of hours with me hitting fly balls and grounders on the diamond at Clear Lake Lions Field, pitching batting practice, and standing in our backyard behind a homemade (by him) home plate catching my pitches. Dad hit balls to me until his hands bled. I had a pretty strong arm, and I loved rifling throws from the outfield back to him at home plate. Now that my arm is shot, I think longingly of the frozen ropes I threw, like one might pine for a long-lost girlfriend. After taking flies in the outfield, I’d come in to second base, and Dad would hit grounder after grounder, which I’d fire back to him at home. When we hung it up, I’d be dripping with sweat. Sometimes, we’d drive to State Park or City Beach and jump in the lake to cool off on our way home.
The movie Field of Dreams came out in 1989. I can’t watch the final scene without a lump forming in my throat. In the movie, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) builds a baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. He isn’t sure why, but he does it anyway. He finds out at the end of the movie that the reason for doing so is to reunite with his father, John, who had died years before. They had had a falling out, something that Dad and I never had. But at the end, when Ray steps onto the baseball field, realizes his dad is there, and asks, “Hey, Dad, you wanna have a catch?” I can’t help but tear up. I think of the balls Dad hit me at Lions Field that helped me make the high school team as second baseman. I think of the times we played catch over the years until one year his arm just couldn’t throw any more. I think of my son, Ben, who even today will ask, “Dad, how about a catch?” As I look back, something strikes me that I hadn’t realized before. Take the “g” out of “glove” and what’s left? It’s “love.” Playing catch and hitting grounders was much more than just playing catch and hitting grounders. It was more than baseball. It was a father’s way of showing his son he loved him.
You can’t help but smile when you play catch with your son.
During COVID-19, one of the sorriest things to witness was a major league baseball game played to an empty stadium. Cardboard cutouts of fans in seats just didn’t cut it (pun intended), nor did pre-recorded crowd cheers piped from the loudspeaker system. So, as the 2023 season begins, we remember to take not a game for granted.
A home opener at Target Field
My wife, Jeanine, and I have been Twins fans and going to their games since 1971—first at Met Stadium, then the Metrodome, and now Target Field. There’s something about being at a game on a beautiful afternoon or evening that soothes my soul. The grounds crew drags and waters the infield, puts down clean white bases, and chalks the batter’s box and base lines. Each crew member knows exactly what to do and when, as if choreographed. The players lazily play pepper and toss baseballs back and forth. They gaze up into the stands, smile, stretch, and jog. You meet your “game family,” the fans who will surround you for the next few hours. Who’s there to cheer for the other team? Who’s the most loyal and knowledgeable fan? Who’s traveled from Fargo? Which one will have had one too many beers by the sixth inning? Will anyone keep score (a lost art)? We stand when we hear the voice over the loudspeaker say, “Ladies and Gentlemen….” We hold our hats over our hearts, sing the National Anthem, and then hear two of our favorite words: “Play Ball!”
Former MLB commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti said it well: It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.
Note: This blog is an excerpt from my 2021 memoir The Older I Get the Better I Was.