The Baseball Essay

Submitted By yankeegirl33
Words: 863
Pages: 4

The Baseball It was almost dark by the time I got home from the hospital; I had volunteered to stay with my dad until the funeral director had gotten there. I didn’t want him to have to go to the morgue with every other dead body. He wasn’t just another dead body; he was the most important man in my life; he was my dad. As I drove home in silence I knew I should have gone directly to my sister’s house where the whole family had gathered, but I needed to go to my parents’ house first. I wanted to make sure that I cleaned up the paramedics’ mess from hours before. I was picking up a blue latex glove when something small and white caught my eye on the shelf. I walked over and picked up the small white baseball, and I knew exactly where we had gotten it. I sank into my dad’s chair and let the tears flow and the memories take over. It was June 2003, and Father’s Day and my son Christopher’s birthday always fall within days of each other, this year we were celebrating them together, and I couldn’t wait to give them their gift. This year I had gotten them the best gift and it was something that we were all going to enjoy three tickets to the next nights Yankee game. As I placed the tickets into the cards I smiled because while I had been to games with my dad, and had been to games with my son we had never gone all three of us together. Three generations of Yankee baseball fans, going to a game together, it was going to be amazing. The next day we got up and got ready to go to the Bronx, we had on our brand new Yankee shirts, and my dad brought his glove just in case. The hot June sun was already high in the sky as we set out for Yankee Stadium, and I don’t know who was more excited about going (I think Chris was because I let him skip the last day of second grade so we could make batting practice.) Baseball had always been our family thing for 34 years. My dad and I would spend countless summer nights watching the Yankees on television. Sometimes we would just sit in silence, but most of the time we would chat about our day. Even when I was a teenager and didn’t really want anything to do with my parents, there were Yankee games, and a seat next to my dad always waiting for me on the couch. It’s what bound us together. So here we were, the three of us entering Yankee Stadium, our seats in the bleachers Section 39 with the Bleacher Creatures (legends at Yankee Stadium, it’s where roll call gets called from and my son was thrilled to be sitting there.) We settled in and watched the players take the field for batting practice. We watched them shagging balls in the outfield and joking around; it was the perfect summer day. I loved watching my dad with my son; he was doing for him what he had done with me since I was little. He was teaching him about baseball while telling him stories of the Yankee legends that he got to watch