Unless it comes to the Tour de France or, quadrennially, the Olympics, I am not much of a sports fan. Daddy was not much of an athlete, so we did not have a whole lot of sports culture going on in the house. One of my uncles follows sports a lot more closely, and we did have a minor league team in town. Every summer, between my uncle and different youth group or family activities, I would take in a few games. Since the team was a farm club of the New York Yankees, I became a fan of that team. Still, at 11 or 12 when I was given the choice between going to a Yankees game or a production of Annie on Broadway, I chose Annie.
So when my parents’ marriage came apart, there was not much that my dad and I really held in common. It was not like when all else failed we could go out for a catch in the backyard. To his credit, Daddy kept working at it. He’d get me to go out to dinner or do little jobs for him in the business that he ran. It could not have been easy for him to reach across that gap which probably exists with all fathers and sons but is especially wide when the son blames his dad for the divorce.
For the record, I am aware that the situation was … um … complex, to say the least. Sometime during the second year of college, I started to become aware of the nuances and to want to have a bit more honest relationship with my father. It did not hurt that he had moved to New York City, a place I have often liked to visit. He had closed his business and gone to work for a major national bookseller. He got me a job in their main store near Union Square where I worked with the Puerto Ricans in the receiving room. I learned to navigate the subways, finding alternate routes when a line went out of service. I played Cypress Hill for the PRs and they played Lynard Skynard for me. We listened to the Yankees games on the radio every afternoon.
So I knew the players and followed the team as they took a shot at the pennant. Don Mattingly and Bernie Williams were big stars. Danny Tartabull played in right field and Wade Boggs lurked in the infield. As the season built, the closest competition came from the Detroit Tigers. Late in June, the Tigers came to New York for a three game series that played an important role in which team took the lead in the Eastern Division of the American League. Daddy and I got tickets for the second game.
We took the 4 or the 6 (I don’t remember which) to the old Yankee Stadium. It was sort of a dump in some ways, and although we did not get to the park in time to see the memorial park in left field, we did get our Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and drinks in plenty of time to settle into our seats and enjoy the game. Splurging a bit, Daddy bought me a program as well. I don’t quite know why, but after I looked at the instructions I decided to score the game on the enclosed card.
After a couple of innings, I began to see a story being played out in the numbers. Each at bat was meaningful. Each strike a sigh of relief or anguish at a threat squashed or opportunity blown. And it is true that the game really does not translate onto the TV. The skill, grace, and athleticism of the game don’t really reveal themselves until you see it in person.
What else was revealed at this game is that there really is magic in a ballpark. Despite perceived faults or debts owed, despite the fact that this is not something either of us really had a passion for, and despite the fact that we did not talk all that much during the game, my father and I experienced that magic together. After that, instead of enumerating all the things that kept us apart, I could start to keep score of things that we held in common. Including a victory over the Tigers, 4-3.