It was just a small round object of white, with a core made of cork or rubber, wrapped in yarn and covered with leather. When I was young you could buy one for 50¢ at the local department store or you just took a used one home from the ball bag of the team you played for. But in the hands of a young man it was worth a million dollars and later became the vehicle for communication when there was none.
I struggle to remember at what age baseball caught my fancy, but every memory I conjure up from my youth seems to somehow end up with images of a baseball cap, a glove and a ball. In reality my very first ball and bat was not wood and horsehide, but made of plastic (both ball and bat) and were purchased to ensure my safety and that of the windows in our small Mosby home. But most every night it was my older brother Randy and I pretending we were big-time Major Leaguers with one pitching the plastic ball to the other brother who had bat in hand swatting “home runs” into the next driveway.
When we got big enough, and our aim a little more true my Father convinced our Mom it was safe and they invested in leather gloves and a baseball for us to play with. While it wasn’t safe to add a wooden bat to the mix, Dad knew that by giving us the gloves we could play catch and for the time we would be happy. And with that he continued a tradition still handed down every day in some front yard or back yard….playing catch with your Dad.
For my brother and me it began after Dad got home from work. While Mom was cooking dinner, Dad would stand at the driveway in front of the car, defending it like a catcher defending home plate from the errant throws of 2 young boys still getting the feel of a heavier ball. And with it he would talk…back then it was nothing major or earth-shattering, just normal father-son talk about the players we all loved and the hapless Kansas City Athletics.
And so it grew from there. I remember waiting impatiently to see my Father’s car pull up to the Stop sign down the street and then turn right onto South Road to come to the house. We would be there, gloves in hand. And each night, even after a tough day of driving a truck, he would stop and play catch.
With those games of catch my Father instilled in me a love for the game of baseball, but he also started what would be our best way to talk to each other. Playing catch became the sedative for calming us as we discussed events both positive and negative. I think the first time I realized that my Father was using the psychology of the “game of catch” was after a particularly disappointing Saturday morning church league game. You see, my Dad loved Coaching and when we were kids he volunteered to be the coach for our local church team. I know it couldn’t be easy for him, with 2 sons on the team, to be fair and impartial but he still treated everyone the same. I got just as many reminders as the next player and many times he expected more of me.
That particular day not only had I struck out 2 times, but I had booted a couple of easy grounders and in frustration I threw my glove to the ground. Bad move! My Father had one particular rule when you were on the baseball diamond….”Never lose your cool”….and I really violated it that day. He stopped the game, walked out to my position and calmly told me to take a seat on the bench. I know I looked absolutely astonished that MY DAD, of all people would pull me out of the ballgame. But there he was, arm around my shoulder walking me off the field and sitting down with me on the bench. We said nothing…..he coached from the bench and I sat there with tears running down my cheek. I didn’t know till many years later that inside he was crying as much as me.
Normally after a Saturday morning game the ritual was to go home, grab a bath and wash off all the dirt and sweat from the ballgame and prepare for lunch. But that day my Father grabbed my brother’s glove and said to me “grab the ball and let’s play catch”. I was still pouting and wasn’t really in the mood, but he insisted. We stood out in the front yard just simply playing catch for a few minutes until he decided to speak. That was the first of the “Father-Son” lectures that seemed so effective because it was over a game of catch.
My Father was our Coach for 4 years from the time I was 8 till I was 12. By the age of 13 I had grown too old for our town church team and was playing elsewhere, and my parent’s divorce had made getting to the ballgames a little tougher for Dad. But Sundays became the day we would visit with my Father at my Grandma and Grandpa’s house just outside of Mosby. And that day would be what I would label in my teen years, “lecture day”.
But in hindsight it really wasn’t. You see, my Father with all his imperfections, was still a man who required a sense of integrity and decency in his sons. Life had handed him a set of circumstances that had dictated some unfortunate choices on his part and he never wanted us to have to travel the road that he did. So, while struggling to bring his own life to a center of purpose, he gently guided all of us through our teens in our own special way. For me, it was with sports.
Trying to paint a picture of my Father as the perfect Dad would not be fair either to me or to his memory. Dad knew his own set of imperfections and he knew the boundaries of where he could best be my guide and what I would truly listen to his counsel about. When he knew it was out of his comfort level he would suggest people he knew in my life that he hoped would influence me. Dad, with the knowledge of my love for football, basketball and baseball always directed me to talk to my coaches because he knew of the admiration that I had for certain ones of them. He knew that I would listen to them because at that time in my life I had grown closer to them because of their proximity to my everyday events.
But even in those days we still had the Sunday game of catch. Somehow, even when I thought we were so far apart in our beliefs, we still managed to rekindle the bond of Father-Son magic. Even if just for those few moments it appeared we were cosmically transported back to the small front yard on South Road in our little town.
As cliché’ as it may seem to be to say, time marches on for us all. Graduation brought changes for us both and the normal Sunday games of catch drifted into memories. Only occasionally would I come back to town to visit in those first years away and most of that time would be spent seeing old friends and visiting old haunts. But every once in a while my Father would want to talk and we would drift outside with a ball and softly toss it to each other. Gloves were not necessary then because it wasn’t so much about throwing the ball as it was about “catching up” and my Father dispensing his wisdom. And it was in those years that I realized that playing the game of catch with my Dad would take on a different form as we grew older together.
The hardest part of growing up yourself is realizing as you become an adult your parents age too. And the frailties we all avoid talking about manifest themselves in our parents. The physical distance from each other also forces you to alter what was a time-honored experience to one that meets the need you both have. So, for my Dad and I, phone conversations became our “game of catch”. Just like the days when we would physically play catch, our conversations would be about the latest on the Royals or the Chiefs, but would somehow manage to morph into conversations about the grandkids, jobs and how life was going for myself and my family. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The last few years had been rough for Dad….lung cancer had been diagnosed several years back and his heart condition was getting worse, but being the strong-willed man that he was, he beat the odds each time. Several times I would rush from my home in Columbia, MO to Liberty Hospital with the fear that I was seeing his last days. But each time, with the resilience of Popeye after eating spinach, my Dad would slowly but surely beat back the foes of time and poor health.
But like all things physical you can only stand so much before the body is no longer strong enough to fight, or you decide the dignity of living outweighs the longevity. In April of this year my Father called me “just to talk”….he knew my wife and kids were going to be in KC for the Spring Break period and he wanted to make sure and ask me to come with them. He had some things he wanted to talk about and he felt they needed to be said in person. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but the sound of his voice made it obvious that this conversation would be much different than the others. So, I changed my plans and flew to KC to chat.
I woke that Friday morning to an overcast sky, a sign I should have noted as an ominous one. On my way over I mentally prepared myself for a conversation I knew was inevitable. But even with the fair warning from a prior night’s conversation with my sister, I wasn’t prepared for it. My Father had been to his Dr. the prior week and had been told that the cancer had spread enough that there was no longer anything that could be done that wasn’t extraordinary to prolong his life. So, with the firm resolve that quality of life is more dignified than quantity my Father said “No more”.
With the Dr.’s prediction of a 30-60 day timetable my Father set out with the task of finishing things to him left undone. He wanted to make sure that the burden of tasks left to his children was minimal, and the plans for his wife of 37 years suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, were set in stone. But like so many times before my Father managed to stretch everyone’s timetable and make all of us believe he could be invincible. And that was why when the call came from my sister in late July that I should plan to come home I was still stunned.
I left my home in Kentucky that Wednesday morning for the 9 hour drive to KC. The worst part of a long trip like that is the worry that the phone would buzz and the caller at the other end would tell me I was too late. “Too Late” was something I did not want to be…for these would be important moments for me.
The next day I arrived at my sister’s house to meet them. We drove Dad first to NKC Hospital, and then checked him into NKC Hospice House where he would remain until his passing almost a week later. It was those few days that we spent together alone in his room that I will cherish. We talked about everything from the Royals to the Chiefs, to the Good Times gang and his Fantasy Football League, to his life as a trucker. But it was one special conversation that will stay with me forever.
I had never told him “thank you” for giving me the gift of the love of sports, but I needed to that day. I wanted him to know that the many lessons I learned in life came from the field of play and those people who I interacted with, played with or against. I wanted him to know that when he and I played catch I never felt closer to him, and somehow I wished that we had done it more. And that I appreciated all the time he had been there watching me play in High School. I wanted him to know that I would be OK, and that I wanted nothing between us unsaid or regrettably not done. And with no more words to be said and with nothing more than a squeeze of his hand my Father and I said our goodbyes.
My Father passed away quietly in his sleep 2 days after that conversation. On my plane trip back home I found myself not feeling regrets, but smiling over great memories we shared together.
But like the Kevin Costner character in Field of Dreams, I dreamed there was some way to magically go back to the old Mosby home I remember. I would stand on the edge of the property of 412 South Road and look down the street to the stop sign. I would watch for the old Blue Ford Galaxie to come down the road and pull into the driveway.
And just one more time I could play catch with my Dad.
