My dad died two and half years ago. It's an ache I carry with me every day, although I have grown used to the pain, and, like a bad knee or a bad back, I don't really notice it anymore unless it gets poked.
After my parents divorced, my dad and I spent awkward weekends in his studio apartment in Chicago, bored out of my mind and counting the minutes until I could go home. I was miserable.
Then, when I was 14, I discovered baseball. I discovered Mark Grace and Ryne Sandberg, Robin Ventura and Craig Grebeck. And I discovered that baseball was beautiful and complex and perfect, and that the players were stone-cold foxes. But the best thing I discovered was that my dad and I finally had something to talk about and do together. Those miserable weekends became something I looked forward to. My dad, who was totally sexist, began to value my baseball opinion. We talked well into the night.
He took me to my first Cubs games, a doubleheader against the Reds. I wasn't prepared for the beauty. We walked in under the big red marquee, and we walked through the dark tunnel, and then up the stairs into the bright sunlight and saw the greenest green my eyes have ever seen. Our seats were right behind home plate, where I could hear every expletive muttered by the players and the blue of their pinstripes was so vivid against the whites of their uniforms. I fell in love that day, and I have been in love ever since. Later that season, he took me on the field at Wrigley for some kids event. I touched the ivy. I stood on first base and pretended I was Mark Grace. I ran the bases and had one of the greatest day of my life.
My dad and I became very close, and remained close until his death. When I moved to Minnesota for college and stayed there for a decade after, he called me and updated me on everything baseball. For a while, I grew away from the sport, following it only peripherally because I was focusing on college and life. We watched the Cubs in the 2003 playoffs together, despite the distance, by talking on the phone the whole time. I was crying when the Bartman incident happened and everything failed, but he was explaining to me that this was the life of a Cubs fan. He had been through it in 1969 and it taught him to always be cautiously optimistic when it came to the boys in blue.
As my dad got older, he preferred staying home to going to the ballpark. I could get him to go to Comiskey sometimes, but he never wanted to go to Wrigley. So we watched baseball on tv, and shared memories, and talked about the players we liked best. When I bemoaned losing Theriot, he talked up Castro. When Kid K walked off the field that last game, I called my dad, crying, and he said I'd love again. He called after every Steve Clevenger hit or Blake Parker strikeout. When Robin Ventura was named manager of the White Sox, he called me incessantly until I picked up. I always called him after meeting a baseball player, and he always wanted to hear every detail and made me repeat everything. He was always the first one to give me baseball news, but he was also the first one I called to talk about my baseball adventures.
Every Father's Day, I picked up a pizza and went to his house to watch baseball all day. It was our tradition for almost 20 years. Since he's died, I spent those first two Father's Days at baseball games, and I'd get a slice of pizza and sit alone and watch the game and miss my dad.
This year, I decided to hang out with my stepdad and the rest of the family. I was beginning to regret my decision when John Mallee, a wonderful man and the Cubs hitting coach, offered my friends and I on-field batting practice tickets and seats to Saturday's game against the Pirates.
It was surreal. I was standing there, the day before Father's Day, mingling with Kris Bryant and Billy Williams, Wrigley's dirt drifting in my sandals. Our seats were behind home plate. I was back in time. I wanted to call my dad to share with him this unexpected gift. He would have understood that the awe I felt as a child standing on that field was the same awe I felt 20-some years later, standing on that same field. I loved every second of yesterday, and I know he wasn't literally with me, but I think he had a glimpse from heaven of the heaven I felt yesterday.
He would've loved this Cubs team so much. He would've loved Maddon's management style. He would've loved watching Arrieta pitch and Bryant hit. I have wished many times that my dad could watch this team with me, but yesterday, I felt like he did. As crazy as that seems, I felt closer to him on that field than I have felt since I lost him.
Baseball is the connection between my dad and me. I will always have my dad to thank for my love of baseball, but now I have John Mallee to thank for giving us that Father's Day moment.
I miss you, Dad.
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