5/2

I grew up as a sports crazy kid in Yonkers, NY, and since all of my friends were the same way, we played pickup games all year-round. Tackle and touch football and baseball and stickball and whiffle ball and dodgeball and kickball and basketball. Little League baseball was the only organized sport so that was the only time I actually played on an official team. Mostly, after school, we just picked up teams and played until it was too dark or it was time for dinner. We did this pretty much every day.

One memory I have is the summer I decided I wanted to be a left-handed pitcher (I was normally right-handed). I would wait until my father got home from work and after rushing him through dinner I'd make him come outside and play catch with me. He would stand there indulging me while I either bounced pitches off his legs or winged them over his head into Mr Levy's yard next door. I don't imagine this was fun for him but he never complained. He was great about that stuff. He might have been tired after a long day but he never said no. Thankfully, for him, this left-handed obsession lasted only one summer.

The 2011 baseball season began a few weeks ago and while I always look forward to the start of a new season, this year feels particularly poignant.

My dad died suddenly at the end of January so this is the first year I can remember where we weren't discussing spring training or the upcoming Yankee season. He was a life long Yankee fan and watched all the games with great enthusiasm. He would often call me in Boston with the highlights of some afternoon game he had just watched. A funny thing he did was call the players by their first names. He'd say things like, 'Mariano was just terrific' or 'Derek got two hits' or 'Andy pitched a great game'. It was like all his favorite players were members of our extended family so he called them by their first name. It was very sweet.

We had the chance in the last few years to go to some games together. Twice I met up with him and his buddies from the Senior Center to see the Yanks play the Sox at Fenway. Me and thirty or forty old guys sitting in the right field grandstand. It was great. We also went down to Yankee stadium twice. Once Mike Mussina out-pitched Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins for a 1-0 win and in the final season of the old Yankee Stadium we witnessed a Nick Swisher walk-off home run for another win. Those memories would have stayed with me anyway, but now they are especially significant.

Baseball and sons and fathers has become a bit of a cliché over the years (with all the teary sentimental movies it's no wonder), but like most cliché's there's a lot of truth to it. When my mom died suddenly in September 1999, we took solace in watching the Yanks win the World Series. Those games gave us a temporary respite from our collective grief; a brief diversion from our own pain. It brought us closer together and in the years that followed it kept us close. It remained a great comfort to us both.

It's been hard getting interested in baseball this season. I miss my dad.