I love baseball. I can’t remember when it started because we didn’t have a team growing up but I listened to every story my dad told about his “good ol’ days” and I loved every minute of it. I was on the edge of my seat, bursting with questions. It was like getting to know a secret. He was a catcher and he would tell me all the things he would say to the batter to get in their head. He told the game as if it was live, happening right there. I hung on every word. The way he tells stories is unlike anyone else. Maybe it’s a dad thing, but I’m pretty sure that’s an LJF thing.

As the youngest in the family, I was left solo with my parents for four years of high school and it was honestly, really, really great. My dad and I would watch an hour or two of tv together, damn near every night. We watched some truly terrible television together. And some really great television too. It wasn’t really about what we watched, rather what we discussed in those moments. The back and forth, the turn of the phrase. A zinger for a zinger. A new catchphrase to add to our repertoire. A mumbled sentence that ended up sticking. I haven’t said the word probably correctly in a decade, because once upon a time, one of us said pobby. And now that is how you say it.

I remember when the world series came on and we started watching and betting. And again, I was on the edge of my seat, bursting with questions. There are moments frozen in my brain like this. Many of those frozen moments, we’re in our respective chairs, losing it over something that I can’t even remember anymore. Just fragments of funny phrases and words we said over and over again.

So when spring sports roll in and the kids go out to the diamond, I’m there. Especially, when one invites me as their honored guest. I think about my dad the whole time and I wonder what we’ll talk about during the next world series. Even though I’m not at home anymore, we still watch, in our respective houses.

And we still bet, every night via telephone. And I’m sitting on the edge of my seat, bursting with questions. My fingers cannot type fast enough to fire them off to him. But he always has the answer. And we always end up giggling. In the 2023 world series, it was “wiggle elbow” that got us. I still cannot think that phrase without laughing out loud and I want to use it when I’m out there watching… When I think I see one out on the mound. But there’s no one to tell. And that’s a little sad but it also lets me stay in my head and revisit the memories.

And that’s the ball game, folks.