Why I LOVE baseball!

It was 1998….

…the summer that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa captured our attention with their efforts to beat Roger Maris’ single season home run record. My daughter was only 2 at the time, but even she knew who “Mark DeDwire” was.

…it was the summer that my son Casey caught his first fly ball in left field.

…the summer that Casey had memorized and could recite all of the stats for his favorite baseball players.

…it was the year that I woke up every Saturday and Sunday morning to the sound of some baseball game on the Nintendo 64.

….the year that Casey didn’t quit hitting and pitching in the front yard until all of our baseballs disappeared into the snow.

…that fall that we watched El Duque’s high leg kicks in his pitching windup that led the Yankees to a World Series Championship against the San Diego Padres.

….it was the year that both Casey and I decided that the Yankees would be “our team”

…it was the year that I fell in love with baseball

In the years that have passed there have been difficult times in my relationship with my son, there have been arguments, worry, disappointments and tears – lots of tears….but there was always baseball. No matter how mad we might have been at each other, we could always sit down and watch a game. Or when his social life became too busy during the high school years to actually watch a game, we still had something to talk about.

The summer of ’08 was not a good one for Yankee fans; in fact it was a horrible season as we failed to even make the play-offs for the first time years. But even the losing season gave me something to write about as I struggled to pump out at letter every day just to make sure that he never went to boot camp mail call without walking away with at least one letter.

This year though – this year has been amazing. Our team marched through the season to the World Series as if it were their destiny. It was an awesome game last night, the best part though was when my phone rang at 11:46 and I heard his voice say “Are you watching Mom? Are you watching? This is gonna be it – it’s the last out” I stayed on the phone with him for the whole 4 minutes of Shane Victorino's last out and then we whooped and hollered until he said “now go to bed, you’ve got to get up early tomorrow”

But as I laid in bed and tried to relax enough to sleep, it occurred to me……even though he’s 4 thousand 4 hundred and 28 miles away…..and even though it’s been 11 months and 2 days since I’ve seen him….I was still able to share last night’s world series championship with my son.

So find some way, some topic to connect with your kids. You may find it in the most unlikely subject – but find it. I can’t even put into words what it meant to know that when that last batter was standing at home plate – it was me that Casey called – it was me that he chose to spend that moment with.

And that is why I LOVE baseball!!