Saturday, November 20, 2021
Clifton, NJ
The absolute irony of my jokingly naming one of the only other non-baseball posts on this blog "A Death in the Family" (about the demise of my car of 20+ years) has never been more apparent until this very moment.
My father passed away at the end of last year, the same week that my team in Japan (Tokyo Yakult Swallows) won their first Japan Series in decades. Under normal circumstances, that championship would have been the highlight of my year, but it was relegated to an afterthought of a footnote, much as the US Thanksgiving holiday that same week.
Familial relationships are by definition complex and never perfect. As with many, around adolescence, there was a parting of the ways between us that never quite healed, and only became more ragged in the tumultuous and unprecedented times we found ourselves in recently. But not to get too City Slickers, there was always baseball as a neutral corner to talk about when we just needed to communicate.
Baseball is a disease passed from fathers to sons. He bought me my first glove (which I found while cleaning out my parents' basement) and signed me up for Little League. He never could fully understand how to help me, as a southpaw who probably batted righty because that was the only way my dad knew to teach me--but he tried. He took me to my first MLB game, of which I still remember snippets. I know the last game we saw together was a Spring Training game at Port St. Lucie two years ago right before the world went to Hell.
And I sit here months later, and I still don't know what to do with it. The facts of the situation are all still the same, but I still can't... I don't know, deal with them. I can still hear him in my head. I still sort of expect to see him at some point, like he's been down in Florida for an extended period of time. But I was at the funeral. I saw the body.
And when I have to center myself, I can think of us in ballpark together someplace, watching a game, and everything was okay for a few hours. But even baseball doesn't have enough magic for that.
