Baseball and Dad

It's finally spring. The trees and flowers are blooming, and the days are getting longer. What I like about spring is that Baseball has returned. There is always a new beginning, a feeling of hope, and an excitement that lets you feel things will be better.

Baseball is the one game that fathers and sons, grandfathers and grandsons can have many a conversation about. It is probably the only game that all men have played at one time or another. Each generation has its own list of great ballplayers, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Willy Mays, Mickey Mantle right up to the stars of today. Grandfathers and fathers would tell how great the ballplayers were in their day. The players today would not make it in those days, they would say.

My Dad, liked Baseball. I always thought he just had a passing interest. He really liked the game. As I got older we would talk about the Phillies and what happened in the game the night or day before. When I would go visit him and Mom, the game was always on. I don,t ever remember him having a favorite player, but he knew about Ashburn and Roberts, Callison, Richie Allen. He knew the good players on other teams too.

In the last year of his life, the Phils were making a run for the pennant. He knew they didn't have any great players, but he liked the way they played the game. Somehow they won when they shouldn't have. In the last few days, while in the hospital, he told me " I really like that Pete Incaviglia", he can really hit some big home runs." I know why he liked Pete. It was because Pete was Italian. My Dad liked the Phillies, but to have an Italian playing for them and doing well, was more than he could ask for.

My Dad never got to see the Phils go to the World Series in that year, but the last time we talked, it was about Pete and the Phillies. Every year when Baseball season starts, I think of that time, and I think of my Dad, and I smile and say to myself " I like that Incaviglia".