For as long as I can remember, my mom has scolded me for flipping straight to the sports section of every newspaper I've ever picked up. Her well-intentioned words urging me to be more informed about the "real, important things in life" may have fallen on deaf ears, but the concept of being "too invested" in sports admittedly intrigues me. I'm almost inclined to agree with critics of the mind-numbing importance our country places on sports - which ostensibly is "just a game." The glorification of athletic endeavors at the expense of education and other important professional and personal pursuits certainly can damage a sports fan's sense of perspective - as evidenced by the results of SportsNation-type polls judging whether more Americans can correctly identify Muammar Gaddafi or Jimmer Fredette. A life lived solely according to the Gospel of ESPN obviously is as unfulfilling as it is unrealistic; nevertheless, passionate sports fandom is far from the frivolous or shallow human experience that its cynical critics suggest.
Every sports fan experiences at least one seminal moment that is so special, lasting and formative that he cannot help but carry it with him forever. These are the reasons we spend our lives playing and watching these "games" - for these indelible reminders that it's good to be alive; that just as there is often much more to life than sports, sometimes sports - in its beautiful sights and smells and truths and memories - is nothing less than the "real, important things" in life itself. Mine is the story of a father, a son and a baseball game.
I know I'm biased, but my dad is my hero. The eighth of 10 children, he grew up in the dirty, dying Pennsylvania town of Tyrone - where a daily diet of grubby cigarettes and trick shifts at the local paper mill prematurely claimed the life of his father and sapped the souls of too many high-school classmates to count. He became the first in his family to graduate - let alone attend - college upon earning an accounting degree from Penn State, and he then moved to Findlay, Ohio to work for Marathon Oil. While forcible relocation to the town that bred Ben Roethlisberger would incite angst under any circumstances, the experience proved particularly traumatic for a die-hard Nittany Lion fan in the heart of Ohio State country. So he did his grocery shopping during Buckeyes gameday Saturdays, and counted the days.
After our family settled in a suburb of Chicago, Ill., my dad often took me to baseball games at Wrigley Field, where - armed with gloves on our hands and Pittsburgh Pirates hats on our heads - we made a mess of our Chicago-style hotdogs and cheered on the visitors at the top of our lungs. We watched Greg Maddux routinely dominate the Buccos' batting order back then, and more than a decade later, the Pirates are still losing at historic levels - but my dad never lost heart and always believed his beloved team would rediscover the magic of Mazeroski and Pittsburgh's 1960 World Series triumph. My dad also never lost heart after being diagnosed with cancer around this time last year. The goodbye letter he wrote to family and friends before he passed away overflowed with appreciation for the people and places he felt so privileged to know - and especially for the fact that he raised his two sons to "love sports almost as much as I do."
My dad could have written a best-selling book about overcoming the odds and making the best of every curveball life hurls your way, but he also knew that we both would have way more fun if instead he taught 3-year-old me - and eventually 20-year-old me - everything I needed to know about life as we soaked up the sun, admired the ivy and did our best renditions of Harry Caray's timeless "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at those afternoon games at Wrigley. My dad loved anybody who loved the game as much as he did, and he never passed up an opportunity to praise players who made it to the Majors ahead of more talented guys simply because they wanted it and worked at it more. He taught me the virtues of baseball fundamentals - to this day, I still groan when an outfielder hurts his team by failing to hit the cutoff man. He had the art of snagging foul balls down to a science and risked life and limb for them on numerous occasions because in his estimation, "that's a pretty good way to go out." He told me the timeless story of how he proposed to my mom - naturally, at a baseball game - by putting the ring as the prize in a box of Cracker Jack. And after the final pitch - as we walked together through the crowded Wrigley concourse of vendors and bleacher bums and peanut shells and spilled beer - win or lose, he always asked the same question, the only thing that truly mattered to him: "Well, Matthew, did you have fun?"
I'm nowhere near ready to start contemplating the ballpark experiences I will share with my hypothetical kids. Heck, just last night I was enthusiastically singing along to the raunchy lyrics of Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch" in the shower and demonstrating about as much maturity as my fellow St. Ignatius College Prep alum, Megan Levant, showed when she recently became Charlie Sheen's newest "goddess." But when I think about how much my dad gave and continues to give me through our shared sports experiences, I can't wait for those days of education, inspiration and life-changing love between father and son to arrive. And no matter where my kids and I watch the game - and life - unfold before our eyes - be it the Friendly Confines, or Camden Yards, or Pittsburgh's picturesque PNC Park - I hope that after the final pitch, as we walk together through the crowded concourse, win or lose, my kids will answer their dad's question, as I did with mine, with one of their own: "When can we come back?" Far from clouding my sense of perspective in life, sports crystallized it - and just like a Greg Maddux two-seam fastball, I'd argue it's right on the money.
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