Baseball Sans Dad

It’s harder than I thought to watch baseball without my father. I’m sadder than I thought I would be for longer than I thought I would be. It’s surprising how choked up I feel right now as I write, yet also how compelled I feel to write. I had meant to keep my blog up-to-date this season, but I begin to write, and my fingers cramp, and my heart aches, and I wonder if my dad is watching baseball now, somehow, or if he’s watching me and thinking that he is also surprised about how much I miss him.

I have wanted to call him so many times already, have even stupidly reached for my phone and then remembered that it doesn’t work like that anymore. I see fathers with their sons, and it just hurts so much that we will never watch a game together again. My eyes will randomly fill as I watch the game, out of nowhere, because of nothing, except a deep, searing emptiness.

So this baseballgirl is going to try to get back to the writing, but it may take a while. In the meantime, just cherish the ones you have, even those diehard White Sox fans like my dad who wanted to see another Crosstown Series and who would have secretly rooted for the Cubs, just for me.

Travis Wood and Parenthood

Yesterday I saw Travis Wood's dad at Wrigley---it was clearly his dad, as it looked exactly like him except for gray hair, very very handsome---and he was wearing a 2013 All-Star hat and All-Star shirt. He must have been so proud of his son, so proud that, weeks later, he wore the All-Star gear as his son pitched at Wrigley, maybe hoping someone would ask him about the game, and he could launch into the story of his son, who was a question mark about even making the Opening Day roster, was chosen to be on the All-Star Team.

For some reason, it choked me up, because I realized that, no matter what level of success a child reaches, his parents are just as proud of him as they were when he took his first step, brought home his first report card, won his first trophy, graduated high school, pitched in the Major League All-Star game. All my students' parents at the State Championship game in their WCS gear--I pictured his dad in the middle of all of that when Travis was in high school, and it just struck me as a universally beautiful thing, the unfailing love of a parent.

And tonight when I talked to Travis, and told him I saw his dad wearing the gear, Travis smiled bigger than I've ever seen him smile, and I saw immediately that the feeling was mutual.