Fathers and sons are supposed to have a special relationship through baseball.
It is part of the American pastoral, that great Norman Rockwell painting for which the suburban family strives. A father taking his son to the game on a lazy summer afternoon, both dreaming of hot dogs lathered in sun-warmed mustard, iced coke tickling their noses with each sip, and the snagged fly ball over the third-base rail.
A father splitting a rock hard piece of pink gum with an excited son as he slowly peels the waxy paper from a ten pack of Topps, the son and father both praying with half-squinted eyes for that rookie card of Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Cal Ripken, or the latest new arrival tearing up the Majors.
A son and father, elbow deep in saddle-soap or shaving cream or just plain mud, rubbing and pounding the stiff leather of a new mitt before binding the webbing around a ball with some old twine to store beneath a mattress, forming the perfect pocket.
These are the memories of all American sons of their perfect fathers.
I too have some of those memories, and as I look back at them now, it is quite surprising to me that I never played organized baseball. It is a lazy man’s game, and my inherent aversion to expending energy would have seemed to make me a perfect match for America’s great pastime.
Even before I was old enough to have my first real mitt, my dad and I would spend hours going over our stash of baseball cards, which ones should be trade bait, which ones were duplicates and suitable for bike spokes, which ones I should let no one ever touch under any circumstances, which ones were rubbish because of a player’s poor showing on the field but, nevertheless, worth keeping because of a crazy mustache or monstrous afro.
I have memories of the first balls I threw to him as he crouched behind an imaginary batter (probably it was Reggie Jackson or Dave Winfield); how when my wobbly throw was engulfed in his mitt, he immediately flung the glove to the ground, howling at the top of his lungs and shaking his hand as if I was throwing heat reminiscent of a young Nolan Ryan.
More than that, though, I remember him allowing me to use his glove the first time, the worn leather burying my too-small hand so that every time I reached for a ball I felt as though I would topple over. Seriously, the glove was bigger than my head. But, still, he knew how much I loved that glove, how much I wanted to play catch with it, how much I wanted to show him I could shag fly balls like Gary Carter or Mookie Wilson.
And so off we went.
First in our front yard with soft lobs.
But then as I became more proficient, my dad would stand across the street, and I would crouch ready on the neighbor’s sloped front yard. My dad would then kick his left leg high, practically scraping his knee on his chin, and fling his arm in some cockamamie windmill movement to launch balls as high as he could. With that huge glove swallowing my hand, I would leap and dive, each catch more worthy of Andre Dawson than the last. I never tired.
Nor did he.
But, like I said, I never actually played baseball on a team, and for that I think I was a disappointment to my dad. Or rather, I feel like a disappointment to him now when thinking back on the hours spent catching those moon shot throws of his. Sure he claimed he could toss a rock across the Hudson, so such subatmospheric throws were no problem at all.
Yet, as an adult with a son and daughter of my own, I know differently. I know about the concealment necessary to make our exhausted and worn out bodies twist and turn in play with our kids, whether it is wrestling or dancing or a simple game of catch. Kids just happen to be tireless, and to give our kids the memories that we ourselves had, we too need to be just as tireless.
He sacrificed for me to give me such memories, and yet I wasn’t able to give him the memories of the perfect American son, the one with a crooked baseball cap and dirt caked on the chest from stretching that single into a double, that special excitement and unique joy of watching his son play the sport he absolutely loved, and through watching, his brief return to his own care-free and golden-tinged childhood.
I wish I could have given that gift to my dad.
Now, it is too late, and all I have left is the scent of saddle soap on worn leather, and the memory of my dad’s crazy windup as he aimed for the heavens.