Sixty Weeks to 60: Dad and Baseball

(48 Weeks)

A love of baseball was something my father instilled in me. He was patient in explaining the play-by-play and it was an easy game for me to understand.  He waited to take me to my first MLB game until I was nine probably because he knew by then it would be more enjoyable for both of us. It was 1974 and the Yankees were playing at Shea Stadium because Yankee Stadium was being renovated. He taught me to keep score so I would pay attention.

I loved my dad’s stories about growing up in the Bronx and cutting school and taking the 50 cents he had saved up to buy a seat in the bleachers.  Back then, the players were more accessible and were often known to play stickball or have a catch with the neighborhood kids after a game. My father met the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, Dickey, Lazzeri, and Rolfe. 

Dad was at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, when Lou Gehrig bid his final farewell.  My parents went to a Yankees game on their first date and attended numerous World Series games together, including Don Larson’s perfect game in 1956 against the Dodgers. It’s no wonder I won $100 from a New York Radio station when I was in high school for knowing who the home plate umpire was at that game.

He had taken a hiatus from going to a lot of games as my parents had moved to the suburbs, were spending most of their time running the restaurant, and well, let’s face it, in the first 10 years of my life the Yankees sucked. But 1974 turned out to be a good year to come back. By 1976 in the newly renovated stadium, the Yankees were back on top of the America League. 

Going to games with my dad became a regular thing. And I continued to score the games. When I started playing softball myself, this was a skill that came in handy, especially with my dad as my coach because he knew he could count on me to help and do it right. It wasn’t something any of the other girls on the team knew how to do. 

As my coach, my dad accused me of throwing like a girl. “I am a girl,” I reminded him. He said, “Yes. But if you want to be good, you’ll have to learn to throw like a boy.” And he proceeded to show me how to use my whole arm, and not just throw from my elbow. 

He was right, of course, in teaching me the proper technique, but wrong in equating that the wrong way, was “like a girl.” It was 1975, though. Girls and women were still fighting for equal rights, had only a year earlier won the right to have a credit card in their own name, and only two years earlier had won the right to serve on a jury in all 50 states.  

Aside from being ignorant of a better choice of words, an infliction of most of his generation, he was a good dad in believing his daughter could do anything a boy could do. He was a great coach for life too, and the best “baseball buddy” ever. Attending the Yankees home opener together became a tradition for many years.

I always got him some sort of baseball-related gift for Father’s Day or his birthday.  One year it was a VHS tape of the movie Field of Dreams, one year it was matting and framing a very personal letter his father had received from Jackie Robinson in 1947 in which Mr. Robinson said something like “being a baseball fan for more than 50 years must set some sort of record” basically tracing my family’s love of baseball back to the beginning of time! That framed letter was unfortunately “lost” in one of my parents moves (breaks my heart).  

For our father-daughter dance at my wedding in June of 1993, it was to Carole King’s Now and Forever, the theme from A League of Their Own. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I played the song repeatedly to desensitize myself to it so I wouldn’t cry. I still cried. I still cry today. 

I miss the tears
I miss the laughter
I miss the day we met and all that followed after
Sometimes I wish I could always be with you
The way we used to do, oh

Now and forever
I will always think of you

Next Tuesday – June 18 – would have been my father’s 103^rd birthday. In another four months he will have been gone 18 years. His eulogy can be found here.  

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Did you really think this wasn’t going to include a fundraiser? It’s me. Of course it is! Over the course of these 60 weeks, I am hoping to raise $6000 for the children of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (that’s just $100 a week!). To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.