I used to be soooo passionate about baseball when my boys played it in their youth. Their childhood was spent playing Little League, Babe Ruth, and high school ball. I lived at the fields and relish every smack of the ball hitting leather and crack and ping of a metal and wood bats hitting a ball.
It was all tied up with my Dad also. He taught me to play baseball. I remember watching him play ball on a farm team league in KS. Later after he died, I kept his old cracked mitt in my closet and would take it out to play catch with my sister.
The mitt was supposed to be mine, but I lost it to a sister in the many moves after college. It's ok because I know it is just as cherished in her possession as it was in mine. Besides I don't know that it would be a cherished possession for my boys now. And this morning I discovered this poem..
Pasttime
By Emilio DeGrazia
A girl, nine years of wonder
Still on her face,
Stands directly on the bag at third
Running amazed fingers along the wrinkles
Of my old leather mitt.
It is the bottom of the ninth,
And everywhere in the world
The bases are loaded.
Still on her face,
Stands directly on the bag at third
Running amazed fingers along the wrinkles
Of my old leather mitt.
It is the bottom of the ninth,
And everywhere in the world
The bases are loaded.
I'd like to think and imagine me and my Daddy having this conversation together as if he had never been sick or had died.
