Dad, It’s Baseball Season and I’m Missing You Already

Hey Dad,

I know, I know, you’re shocked. I’m actually writing to you.

What can I say, I’m a typical self-centered child. I never fully understood that parents don’t care whether their kids have anything to say or not; they just like getting letters from them. Now’s a great time to discover such a simple truth, huh?

Same old story. You always bugging me to send you columns and me always saying, “Aw, they stink.” And you with your standard reply, “Just send them to us. We’ll tell you if they stink or not.”

Everything is fine here. We got more winter rain this year, the kind you and mom ran into when you were out here last year. Geez, it’s hard to believe it’s been 12 months since you left here and hit the road for Denver. I can still picture you laboring just walking up and down the steps or sitting out on the deck in your robe under the early-morning sun, reading the paper.

Not much new on the job front. They’re treating me well and things are going fine. I’m feeling fine, but no, I’m still not getting up an hour early to go jogging.

Baseball season starts this week.

I said, baseball season starts this week.

Dammit, Dad, I knew I’d start missing you the most in the spring, right around the start of the season when the weather warms up and the teams break camp and start playing under the lights for real. Man, how many years did we sit and compare notes on who was going to win the pennant and who was going to have a big year and who was going to go belly up?

The answer, in case you forgot, is about 35 years or so, or ever since you taught me to swing a bat and throw a ball and read a bubble-gum card.

I knew you weren’t going to live forever. As bad as you got to feeling, I’m not sure I even wanted you to. I knew time was running out last year when I saw you in August, but there was a pennant race going on, and I figured that would sustain you.

Remember when we talked on your birthday, on New Year’s Day? You hit 70 and although your voice was tired, I thought you sounded pretty good.

Six days later. Just like that in the wee hours of the morning in your bedroom. I know you didn’t feel a thing before you hit the floor.

Sounds stupid, I know, but I have a funny feeling if you could have just hung on till another baseball season, you could have borrowed another six months. No way you would have checked out mid-season. Forever after, I will curse the darkness of the off-season.

I’m being a little selfish, I know.

I’m going to miss coming home from work during the summer in mid-evening, turning on the message machine and hearing, “Well, I see where your Pirates won another one.”

As long as I’m being honest with you, I might as well tell you that I miss getting letters that start out, “Dear Champ. . . .” I’m glad neither of us ever outgrew that kind of correspondence.

I’m probably missing you more now than in the last couple of months because so much of what we talked about involved baseball. Remember when you came into the bathroom in May of ’59 and told me that Harvey Haddix of the Pirates had pitched a perfect game for 12 innings and lost the game in the 13th?

Remember how, when you were superintendent in little old Marquette, Neb., you came into my sixth-grade class and without saying a word, would write the inning-by-inning score of the roller-coaster seventh game of the 1960 World Series, Pirates vs. Yankees?

Remember how I hemmed and hawed last October about spending the money to go to Pittsburgh just to see three playoff games, and you said, “Are you kidding? If you can go, go.”

Yeah, I know you remember.

I won’t kid you, Dad, it’s going to be a different season without you. It’s not like I took all the baseball conversations for granted, but it’s painful thinking we aren’t going to have them anymore.

I don’t want you getting the wrong idea. We’re all doing well. Karen and Nancy and John had more guts than I did at the funeral. They all got up and said something. I don’t know how they did it, but they were great and you would have been proud. There was no way I could have said anything, but if I had, the word baseball would have been in there somewhere.

That’s why it’s a little tough now, but fret not. April always turns into May and before you know it, October will roll around. The season will kick in like they all do, with its own personality and its own unexpected twists and turns, and I’ll miss making the phone calls to you and talking about them . . . but everything will be all right.

All the talks from you over the years about how to handle the tough losses are standing me in good stead.

I guess all I’m really trying to say is I just wish you hadn’t gone so suddenly.

I just wish you could have given me your picks for the season, just one more time.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.