I’m not a parent. If I were, I’d like to think I would have done for my child what my father did for me late in the evening of Oct. 21, 1975 (actually, early in the morning of Oct. 22). Are you a parent? Do you do this? Does anyone anymore?
I was 8 years old. I was in the third grade. And I have long maintained that baseball never means quite so much to us as it does when we are 8 years old. I know that was the case for me. It was when I was 8 that baseball stopped being something I watched because my father did and instead became something I immersed myself in. Completely.
(TRUE STORY: The proudest my father may have ever been when it came to his only son happened the previous spring. I’d made my First Communion on May 17. My parents asked how I wanted to celebrate. There was only one answer: Yankees-A’s, Shea Stadium that night. And off we went.
In the fifth inning they had a baseball quiz. Alvin Dark was managing the A’s. The year before he’d become the third manager to win pennants in both leagues. Who were the first two? My dad asked if I knew. I did: Yogi Berra and Joe McCarthy. Behind us, a couple of middle-aged guys with their bottles hidden in paper bags started giving me a hard time.
