With Father’s Day approaching this Sunday, I have decided to once again pull from the memory vault (aka the external hard drive) to honor my daddy. (That’s right, I'm nearly twenty-seven and yes, I still do call him Daddy. Or Pops. Or Popadoodle. Like I’ve said, we’re a family of multiple names/nicknames.)
of the Bride speech).Enjoy! And happy Father’s Day to my friends and family with kids, and especially to my dad! Love you, Daddy. Oh, and get out the tissues. Because let’s face it, despite the fact that you’ve read this story many, many times, you'll still cry. . . . We have that in common too, after all.
I can remember the way the new rosin bag smelled as I tossed it gently into the air. The white dust billowed in my right hand and the chalky smell permeated my nostrils. I can remember turning my back to the plate and taking a deep breath, trying to compose myself. My heart continued to beat faster and faster, despite my mind telling it I wasn’t nervous. I can remember the weather—beautifully sunny with just the right amount of heat. A few sweat beads rolled down my cheek—were they from the heat of the sun or the heat of the moment?
I can remember why I was there and how everything was riding on me. I can remember. . . .
I was a tomboy. Really, what girl wasn’t at some point in her life? My hair fell to the middle of my back, and yet I tied it into a ponytail every day. If I didn’t have to go to school, I’d throw on my Yankee cap . . . maybe even backwards. I guess you could say I was the son my father would never have—and I was proud of it. After all, I’m an identical replica of my father, all the way from our blue eyes to the way our toes naturally curl. The only thing I’m missing is the Y-chromosome.
My father and I have always shared a common bond: our love of baseball. He had me in Yankee uniforms before I had hair or the ability to speak. There was a glove and a ball in my hand as soon as I could walk. But he never forced baseball on me—I loved every minute of it from the very beginning. When I was five, I started playing softball. You know the kind—coach-pitch with all the little girls on the field using their fathers’ first gloves (which are way too big for their petite hands). They all wear those trucker hats with the brim flat as a board and their stirrup pants to their belly buttons. Yup, I was one of those girls.
I played coach-pitch softball in New York for three years and then my family moved to Virginia. The first thing my father and I did (after unpacking, of course), was to find out about softball leagues. Fourth grade was the first year after coach-pitch, and in Virginia, girls didn’t play fast-pitch until high school. So my father signed us up—me as a player and himself as a coach.
When our team was assembled, my father realized he had twelve girls but no pitcher and no one who wanted to try since the plate was only forty-five feet away from the mound. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about getting hit by a line drive that close to the plate (and trust me, it did happen more than once). But my dad needed a pitcher, so I learned how to pitch.
My dad brags that, to this day, I’m the best slow-pitch pitcher he’s ever seen—a natural. I think he just has to say that because he’s my dad. Regardless, I cannot deny that I was a natural and that I loved pitching! Every play started with the ball in my hand and every play ended with the ball being tossed back to me. . . . You could say I had a hand in every play.
While I was on a recreational team a year later, a scout asked whether I would be interested in a select softball tournament league. Double the softball in one season? I was in heaven. And it didn’t hurt that I had a scout watching me—I could hear the Yankees calling for their first female player.
I tried out for the select team the Lady Renegades as a pitcher. However, the coach, Robin, didn’t see a need for another pitcher since we already had one. That was okay with me, because as much as I loved pitching, I loved playing the game even more. I was just thankful that my father had conditioned me to play each position so I wouldn’t be a bench warmer.
Before each game (and we would usually play two to four a weekend), I would warm up by pitching with my dad, just in case they needed me. And every game, when the line-up was called, I found myself in a position other than pitcher, usually center field. My dad used to tell me that center field was like the pitcher of the outfield, you have to back up everyone and you get to call off the other players for fly balls. I could deal with that until Robin needed me to pitch.
Robin did need me eventually. During one of our games, our pitcher gave up a grand slam to the most gargantuan ten-year-old girl I had ever seen. When I ran into the dugout, Robin pulled me aside and asked if I was ready to pitch this game. I bravely told her that I had been ready to pitch all season, keeping the butterflies in my stomach hidden. This was my chance to prove myself as a pitcher, and if I screwed it up, I might not get another chance. In my determined ten-year-old mind, this was a life-or-death situation.
Two innings later, Robin finally pulled the other pitcher and I walked to the mound, ready to go with a rosin bag in my hand and determination written on my face. I stepped on the mound, kicked it like I had seen the big leaguers do, flipped the ball a few times in my glove, and then turned around to see the batter I was facing. The monstrous girl who had hit the grand slam was wearing the same look of determination. She was cocky. She slammed the plate a few times with her bat and gave me a sneer worthy of any major league player. I swear she was considering pointing to left field.
I can’t remember if the first pitch was a ball or a strike. But it doesn’t matter; I sent her back to the dugout with that stupid look wiped straight off her face. I had struck out my first batter and their biggest hitter. I tried not to let it go to my head, but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw her getting a warning from the umpire for stomping back to the dugout and throwing her bat. It felt good to be in control—I couldn’t have been happier. I can remember looking to my right at my father in the dugout—I don’t think he could have been any happier either.
I thought I had solidified my fate as a starting pitcher that day. And yet, the next weekend I found myself back in center field. Maybe I was just a clutch pitcher, used to get the team out of sticky situations.
That sticky situation occurred when our team headed to the state championship at the end of the summer. My father and I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and drove to Hampton, Virginia, for the ten-and-under state tournament. I had two new rosin bags in my batting bag, two packs of cotton candy Bubble Yum, and a few frozen water bottles—we were ready for the long haul. Dad, being the great guy that he is, let me sleep the whole way so that I was rested for the tournament.
For the first game, it was no surprise when I started in center field, as usual. But in the very first inning, our pitcher had already allowed two runs to score and the bases were loaded with one out. Robin walked out to the mound and waved me in from center field. She placed the ball in my hand and told me to get out of this situation. My heart was pounding as I warmed up with a few pitches. All the possible situations ran through my head: I could strike her out, I could walk her, I could lose the tournament for my team . . . the thoughts just wouldn’t stop. I looked over at my dad in the dugout, his arm raised above him, gripping the fence. Don’t disappoint him, I thought. I threw the first pitch, a strike! I looked back at my dad, who just winked and nodded back toward the game. Okay, here we go. We got out of that inning and ended up coming back to win the game, moving onto the next round.
I finally became a starting pitcher for the second game of the tournament. When our team won and moved on to the final round, Robin pulled me aside and asked if I had one more game in me. I could have pitched five more games I was so pumped! And so, with the state championship on the line, I walked back out to the mound.
It’s amazing what you can remember after many years. I can remember the defining moments in my “career.” Who I warmed up with, which batter I faced, the emotions I felt walking to the mound, and the way the dirt and the rosin bag smelled are all distinct episodes that I can remember. I can remember the championship game like it was yesterday, feeling the seams of the softball underneath my fingers as I turned around to look at my team. The girls were cheering me on, holding up two fingers to signal the amount of outs. I can remember that final out, how I fielded a short grounder and threw it to first base to end the game. I can remember my team running toward me as the Lady Renegades won the state championship.
And yet it’s amazing the things I can’t remember, like the details of the awards ceremony. I was in a tired yet euphoric state—after all, I had just pitched three games back to back to back. My coach was making some sort of speech, with a plaque in her hands. I wasn’t paying attention at all, even when my dad was pushing me toward my coach I was still oblivious to what was going on around me.
When Robin placed the award in my hands, she said something about me pitching more games in one day than I had pitched all season. I can remember that much—but I can’t remember anything more than that. I returned to my beaming dad and figured he could fill in the blanks later. I didn’t even look at the plaque until I got to the car.
***
Eleven years later, my father and I are sitting in Minute Maid Park, watching the first World Series game in the state of Texas between the Houston Astros and the Chicago White Sox. We’re talking about pitchers, how the fate of the game can ride on them. It all seems too familiar to me. I still play softball, recreationally, but I’m no longer a pitcher. I just couldn’t make the transition from slow-pitch to fast-pitch and back to slow-pitch. But when you play first base, you have a pretty good connection with the pitcher regardless . . . especially if you used to be in his or her shoes. As we sit at the game, enjoying our common love of baseball, I think about the day my team won the state championship.
“Hey Dad, want to know something funny?”
“Always.”
“Remember when Robin was giving out awards at the state tournament?”
“Yeah.” (My dad’s always been a man of little words.)
“I was completely tuned out throughout it. I can’t remember her speech and I had no idea what the hell M.V.P stood for until you told me in the car on the way home.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No! You try pitching three games in a state tournament and tell me if you think straight!” (Another thing my dad and I share is our sarcasm—my mom says that’s not one of our attributes.)
“Well that’s why I was never a pitcher.”
“Valid. Is it sad that that is the highlight of my life so far?”
I look at my dad, it’s about 1:30 a.m., the game is going into the thirteenth inning, but for this moment, it is just the two of us. I’m looking at my dad’s blue eyes, the same ones I inherited, as he smiles back at me.
“Erica, I’m fifty and it’s one of the highlights of mine.”
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| July-August 2009: Dad and I went on a nine-days, nine-games, seven-cities baseball tour—starting in Chicago for the Astros at Cubs (and ending at Yankee Stadium for a Red Sox-Yankees game). |
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