how quickly we become children experiencing the world through them again. the amazing feeling of being a child again, and the sudden longing for all the other moments we missed. thank you for reminding me.
The only thing better than taking my son to his first concert was taking him to his first baseball game. He didn't even care that it wasn't the Reds or the Braves and that it was only the Carolina Mudcats...it was just a perfect spring evening at the ballpark.
I'm glad you all had a nice time!
I played softball for my college team and I couldn't wait until I could take my daughter to her first Royals game (disappointing as it always is). She had a blast and for an almost 4 year old, she's got a heck of a swing. Baseball is such a great sport for kids. Nice job entertaining them!
Boys and baseball. I've heard they go together a good percentage of the time, but having grown up with parents who never watched any sport, I wouldn't know. Wonder what the equivalent experience will be like for my kids (both girls) when they're 11. God help me if it's baseball as there is absolutely no way I could sit in the heat watching any kind of sport. I'll be okay with ice hockey, circuses, indoor soccer, poker, large-scale puppetry, farm animal shows, ice skating, and swimming with manatees or dolphins. Anything else and I'll have to really brace myself for it.
Another excellent piece. Surely you are those boys' Most Favorite Uncle. They will remember that trip to Detroit for the rest of their lives.
My aunt and uncle are friends with the Jeter's. Uncle says they are all very, very nice people. The parents travel to FL quite frequently.
And now I finally know which high school you went to!
LOL
This weekend was my kid brother's 21st birthday. He lives a few hours from me, and while he was in college living near me (so up until last year), I had Phillies season tickets that we used together all summer long. He moved away and our baseball trips have stopped. My brother didn't really grow up the biggest baseball fan, and we didn't really have a father in our life to intriduce the more manly aspects of sports. But when we were kids he played little league and I knew that that was the time for him to feel fathered, to feel that fraternity so to speak.
So he came to visit the day before his 21st birthday, and we got there early for photo day. As the game was played, I felt the way that you describe in this essay. Here was my brother the weekend of the birthday that you are supposed to spend trashed and stupid--and he never seemed so young and boyish to me. Sitting beside one another, talking about the game and drifting on to other topics, and the participating in "silly" things that we'd never do otherwise does really revisit a time that does feel, unfortunatly, passed.
Thank you for this. In about a decade I'll have one of these in my home too, and I haven't a clue about boys. I was raised in a family of girls. So reading this helps me get a glimpse of my future.
Oh come one, never cried watching Field of Dreams? I wrote a blog post about my love of that damn movie!
Your story was great and I totally agree to the kids it is magical.
I took my nephew to a University of Toledo football game (don't laugh, they are semi good) and we stayed after to "meet" some players. One guy gave him his sweatband which put my nephew on Cloud Nine for the rest of the evening.
We don't even have kids and already the husband is dreaming of catch in the front yard, coaching little league and taking him or her to baseball games. I pray for his sake, the kid will be into it too.
I love your writing and was disappointed to see that particular word used to describe women. "Meathead" doesn't carry quite the same indictment of a person's sexuality.
That post makes me feel good. . .like remembering things long since forgotten. Thanks, Dutch.
I have it on very good authority that Derek Jeter's favorite off-field activities include kicking dogs, making fun of gay people, and beating up hobos just to watch them die.
Go Mets!
Curtis Granderson is MY Tiger! I'm glad you guys got to catch the one win in that series this weekend.
What a great piece of writing here -- thanks for the sweet reminder of the wonder of boys. I only have sons, no daughters, and I am enjoying the peek into a boy's life. Boys are wonderful.
I was at the Friday game and my sister was at the Sunday game. Something about a live game. It's magic!
"Despite the shriveled gherkin present at every diaper change, I haven't thought that much about how my son is going to turn into an actual boy."
Now that is an image that is going to creep up on me throughout the rest of the day. It's not the only thing I'm taking away from this sweet piece, mind you. But it was the line I just had to let my eyes tumble over more than once. It's just that good.
He breastfed a puppy? That's just sick.
Go Mets!
You're from Kzoo? I lived there for a couple of years. Kept the email addy because I'm too lazy to change it and notify everyone.
In the unwholesome side of baseball news, here in Chicago there's a headline today about a Sox fan losing an eyeball in a dispute with three Cubs fans. ??!!
when i was a kid my mom let us have 3 "sick" days.. we had to make sure one of those days was cubs opener. i recently found this item http://www.bergino.com/ the baseball is pretty cool, but my mom especially liked the printed box, detailing your first experience to the ballpark.
Is it possible for a man, even a liberal, stay-at-home-dad, to call women sluts without sounding misogynistic?
Sounds like you had a much better experience than I did watching the Tigers get trounced by the Indians Monday night. Oh, Tigers.
(sigh) Yes, I remember when I lived in blissful peace, back in the days before my boy became, well, a boy. I had to laugh when you wrote "in ten years"...Honey, try 2. When my boy was 2, we went to Target (I know, I know). He was at that phase when he liked bouncing his head on this big rubber exercise ball we had - I guess he liked the sensation. Well, this Target had those big red cement balls out front, as part of their logo I guess. Dontcha know, the boy decides to bounce his head off one of the cement balls. I think it did actually bounce, to be honest. He cried for thirty seconds and had an egg over his eye for a week, and that's when I knew the days of wine and roses had come to an end.
Oh yeh, and the day he rode his tricycle down the stairs.
And you're right - boys at a baseball game are a great way to get back to the basics of the sport. I can't wait until my guy is old enough to go with me (I'm the baseball fan in our house).
When I was about 11, Reggie Jackson sat at a table near us in a restaurant. It took me all meal long to garner the nerve to bother him for an autograph. The only thing we could find to write on was a doily from the table so that’s where the autograph sits. I wonder what he was thinking when he had to sign a doily? I didn’t care how much money he made or the “Reggie” bars sold in the stores, there is something about a young boys brush with hero that is both indelible and innocent.
I love this story, and the way you write. I know I am gushing like some 14 year old girl with a crush, but I appreciate reading a blog that so often offers up some insight, encasesd in words that read like prose rolled recently off the tounge.
Thanks for sharing all this.
loved it... i'm glad you got that experience. i'm sure those boys are glad too.
Sluts? I love your writing and am surprised how disappointed I am to see you use that word.
Wow, brings back the days of taking our baby, dressed in his little baseball outfit, to Angels games. Somehow he grew up to be a soccer player though, after he went though the pyro phase, the knock-knock joke phase, the mud phase (not necessarily in that order). Boys rock!
Ok, I'm not fond of the "sluts" word either BUT have the folks who commented already on that ever been to a MLB game? I love baseball and I love people-watching so what's more perfect than an afternoon at the ballpark? And as I study the people around me I notice the tight sweaters, the painted finger nails, the 3" wedges that make stair climbing slow... Are they arm candy? Is that what's going on here? Regardless, they are garish and completely out of place at a ball game.
Really, I was distracted for the enitre entry after I learned that you knew Derek Jeter.
Thank you for sharing this - you are a fabulous writer.
Well said. I (not so) secretly was hoping for a boy, so when I saw that "shriveled gherkin" for the first time I was both shocked and a little disappointed. But when I think about the opportunities to share some of my boyhood (like baseball) with my son I forget why I ever wanted a girl.
or - they are girls that like wearing 3" heels and tight sweaters and painting their fingernails. none of these things make them sluts.
i have to admit, the same sentence piqued my interest, although for different reasons - Venezulean streat urchins? For reals? What about Barry Bonds? Or Roger Clemens?
Ugh. I'm totally the blog reader I hate. Whatever. The comment above about the sluts and the Venezuelan street urchins really...annoyed me. Gah.
Nice entry. I really love the line about "the real work of these men.." I agree.
Touche. Baseball is still about the fans-- little boys (and girls, too) in their pinstriped uniforms, baseball gloves held in anticipation, toward the sky.
(And please, for the love of blog, please continue to write freely about sluts.)
we are taking two eight year old boys to a cardinal's game this weekend and i can hardly wait to see their faces (wishing it was at the perfectly good stadium that was torn down for the new faux-old stadium but it will do). i won't be in a halter top clutching a $15 daiquiri though for when at busch stadium, i drink the soon to be dutch budweiser.
I just wrote a post about how I used to bring books with me to the baseball games Charlie took me to when we first started dating (he's been an Angels fan all his life), but how I slowly started falling in love with game.
Honestly though, I want to take your writing talent, roll it up and smoke it. (Lord, that sounds gross.) Do you think I'll write as well as you then?
"The cynic in me sees the sport as a bunch of 'roided up Venezuelan street urchins making CEO salaries to entertain 40,000 drunk meatheads and sluts in halter tops clutching $15 long-necked novelty strawberry daiquiris in stadiums bursting with advertising."
TOO GOOD! Thanks for a great read at the end of a brutal work day.
16 crates of cards! Undoubtedly there are fewer Mets and Bo Jackson cards in there than if we hadn't been friends. Of course, you have many more McGwire's in there thanks to me. I was cursing those deals in the fall of '97 but they probably are not worth as much after the whole lying under oath thing.
Found this site today and enjoyed reminiscing about the days when we were 11. Glad to see you are doing well. What a beautiful family!
I assume you got around to telling them about that summer Derek was struggling with his swing and you spent several hours a day coaching him and showing him how it was done. And then he said he'd never speak to you or acknowledge your existence again (gotta cover your bases) after you stole his girlfriend.
And then something cool happened to make it so you couldn't be a pro player yourself.
The other day, my husband and I were on the way home from someplace, and at a stoplight in College Park, Maryland, were behind a Jeep Wrangler that was covered in Yankee stickers, wheel cover, etc., ad infinitum. The best was the license plate, which read "DRKJLUV" and the Derek Jeter bobbleheads affixed on what appeared to be every flat surface in the car.
I seriously considered following the driver home and offering to sell her my high school yearbooks.
I sold my high school yearbooks on eBay to pay for law school.
Hey Jim -
I have an 11 year old boy and your post made my eyes water. It's exactly as you described.
Like one writer said, I used to take a book to games when my husband took me to watch baseball. But now I love games especially minor league ones in person. Of course, he is a diehard Tigers fan, raving about the World Series that he got to cut school for in the 60s. I had to buy him the baseball cable package so that he could watch as many games as humanly possible. We live in the Dallas area and he hates the Cowboys and doesn't like the stadium where the Rangers play so I rarely have to sit in the heat!
That is a great story!
As a American born Canadian, baseball has not touched my life in much of any way, but I think the same type of story can be applied to hockey in these parts.
I find myself wondering what my six-year-old son will be like in a few short years. As a skiing/soccer fan myself, I am surprised at my son's choices of activities thus far: while he likes skiing and swimming, he detests soccer and has expressed the real desire to learn to golf and fish...I see a lot of private lessons in our future, as I have never learned these "skills" myself.
I too have gone out of my way to keep video games out of our house, and I hear daily how badly he thinks he needs an x-box, a "really big TV" and his own computer!
"It's all very complicated, but thank God for baseball."
nice transition.
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