The game of baseball can bring parents and kids together and it allows for quality time.  Growing up my Dad was my coach from the time i was four years old until I was nine.  He tried to quit a year earlier but all the other coaches seemed to lack the passion for the game so I begged him for one final season and he said yes.  You may think that it is normal to want your Dad as a coach, but I bet nobody else had a Dad who cut them from the all star team.  This actually happened to me and it gave me such intense drive that I began to love the game more, It was as though absence made my heart grow fonder.  I was upset and I was hurt, and years later I would find that being cut from the all star team by my own father hurt worse then my first love breaking up with me.  I knew there were other girls but that all star game was gone forever and no matter how much I wished it back there was nothing I could do.  My dad later explained to me that he wasn’t mad at me I just simply wasn’t good enough, I guess he felt this would make me feel better.  The damage was done, I was hurt but I turned that hurt into a dream, a dream I thought about every night before I went to bed.  My dream was to make the MLB All Star game, and it was my vision when I played in my front yard, and it was what I told my Dad I was going to do when I grew up.  He would say to me, “that sounds like it will be a lot of fun, but why don’t you make sure you get your homework done in the mean time”.

Family and baseball goes beyond parents coaching and family road trips for weekend games, it is much deeper and more intense then that.  I remember when my brother taught me how to keep score at a Tiger’s game, I remember playing wiffle ball at my Grandparents house in West Virginia, and even after reaching the professional level my most fond memories are of my Dad and I playing catch in the drive way and talking about past and current players.  Every once in a while my Dad would try and throw his 12-6 breaking ball and as he released it he would instantly regret the attempt.  As I grew older these games of catch would continue although they were fewer and further in between they were something I always looked forward to and now that they are gone they are something I wish to have back.

Baseball can bring you back like no other sport possibly can, it’s sheer elegance is mystifying.  It isn’t a game played by gladiators smashing into each other, or one on one with a whistle every twenty seconds, but rather a game played by boys in men costumes running around a diamond with maximum effort trying to avoid contact with hook slides, and cutting off ground balls before they get to the outfield.  From rounding the bases with a perfect arch to the perfectly timed double play, baseball is a game in which attracts, and begs for conversations about who the best middle infield duo of all time was, or who was the best hitter to ever live, and which pitcher should actually have an award named after them.  These conversations used to be held within my family on a regular basis then one day they slowed as we grew older, and then almost came to a complete stop when everyone moved out of the house and started their own lives.  I remember the smiles, laughs, and scoffs as each of us pointed out our favorite play, player, or team, the sheer emotion involved in the conversation was fierce as we each stated our case with no way of ever measuring if Barry Bonds was actually better then Babe Ruth or if Ricky Henderson was a step above Ty Cobb.  No ground could be gained and no position could be stated in such a way that is was actually fact and the best part is none of this mattered.  We did not really care if we convinced anyone of anything, we just were happy enough standing around remembering the game and spreading the joy of baseball.  Baseball was and is a family game, it can bring you closer, and it can create memories that will last forever, and stories that can be passed down from children to grandchildren, and even further as the years past.

It is my firm belief that baseball is so ingrained in our nations fabric that opening day should be a national holiday and schools should be shut down for game one of the World Series.  Baseball has had it’s ups and downs, trying time that would almost surely chase an average fan away from an average sport, but baseball is not average sport and baseball will not be tossed away, because simply put, Baseball is America.