For Dad On Father’s Day
My father loved the Red Sox. I didn’t always know that.
As I said in an earlier post, my father didn’t bring me to my first baseball game. My aunt did, and while I understand the reasons now, I have to admit that I didn’t for a long time.
Eight-year old me didn’t understand the economics of a four-child (soon to be five-child), one-income family, or the limitations of time off from corporate jobs. I still didn’t understand it at ten, or thirteen, or eighteen, or even twenty-five.
All I knew was that my father didn’t take me to my first ballgame, or coach my Little League team, or even play catch all that often. We didn’t watch the Red Sox on TV together very much, and when we did, he wasn’t talking to me about the game, or instructing me on the finer points of strategy, or telling me about his favorite Sox players as a kid, or any of the other things I’d seen Ward Cleaver do with Wally and the Beaver.
But now I’ve been a dad for a long time myself, over twenty-eight years, and I see things differently.
I like to think that I’m a pretty good dad. I think I struck a good balance with my kids, somewhere in the intersection of my father, Ward Cleaver, and your favorite goofy 1990s sitcom dad. Ray Romano? Tim Allen? You know what I mean.
Somewhere in there, I realized that my dad didn’t take me to any games at Fenway because he was too busy working for his family, bringing home the money that fed all those kids. There wasn’t any extra cash for tickets, and even if there was, his job didn’t give him much time off to spend it.
It finally dawned on me, as I did things with my own kids, and had to make hard, work-related choices of my own, that my dad was likely just as disappointed as I was that we never got to Fenway together before we moved away.
When we arrived in Kansas City in 1980, and the Royals were really good, Dad made a point of taking me and my brother to a game, only a couple of weeks after we arrived. Money wasn’t as tight, he had more time. When we went back to Boston for a trip a few years later, we went to a Sox game together.
He retired from that job, and seemed to relax. Dad opened up a bit, told us that he loved Ted Williams as a kid. Started wearing Red Sox hats all the time. It was a challenge to find ones that fit his head, but he never settled for a different team.
When I had kids, I made sure to take Dad to a game with us, too. It was a meaningless game between the Royals and Astros, played on a sweltering, humid afternoon. The Royals, of course, got destroyed. We sat in the upper deck, miserably hot in the full sun, my then five-year old son between us, and Dad having every reason in the world to be silent, or ask to leave early.
Instead he spent the game with his Sox cap on, talking endlessly to my son about the game, who he liked on the Royals, and which positions he liked playing the most. When former Red Sox minor leaguer, and future Hall of Famer, Jeff Bagwell hit a home run, we commiserated about the lousy trade the Sox had made to send him to Houston years before.
In short, we finally had the sort of ballgame experience you’d imagine Ward and the Beaver having.
He rejoiced as much as you’d expect when the Sox finally won it all in 2004. And when he died in 2007, I made sure that the ticket stub from our game at Fenway was tucked into his coat pocket, along with a 1954 Topps Ted Williams card.
One of the last photos we have of him is with my niece, his newest grandchild at the time. They’re sitting at a table in his favorite donut shop, his coffee mug and her pacifier pushed to the side, looking playfully at each other as he puts his latest, and as it turned out, final, Sox cap on her head.
That’s the man he always was, and that I was just too young to see. The man who loved his family far beyond his concerns for himself. The man who, when time and finances finally allowed, loved going to ballgames and wouldn’t settle for anything but a good Red Sox hat.
I’m guessing he’s wearing it now.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
I loved this. Great work Paul.
This made me cry for good reasons. Nice work, and a great memory for you, Paul.