Father’s Day
It’s different this year.
Father’s Day can be a lot of things. Maybe you’ll have a cookout and share some beers and laughs. Maybe you’ll take the boat to the lake and take a spin. If you’re a first-time father, congratulations! There is nothing better in the world.
This will be a sad Father’s Day for us as it’ll be our first without our father. After several years of health issues, he passed away on May 23. Many of you have gone through this. The first “without” days seem to be the hardest. First birthday. First Thanksgiving. First Christmas. First Super Bowl. First World Series. People tell me it gets easier with each passing year. I hope they’re right.
I got a lot of things from my dad. He taught me how to hunt and fish. And more importantly, how to clean a fish. He taught me how to drive, albeit at the age of 12. Yes, it was massively illegal and somewhat irresponsible, but things were different in those days. Pop would let me drive the truck down county blacktops while he counted stock. I was told to keep it around 40 to 45 mph, which I naturally tested. Hey! 50 isn’t much different than 45 and 60 isn’t much different than 50. By the time I took driver’s ed at 14, I was driving with one hand on the wheel while taking drags off a Marlboro, window down, hair blowing in the wind with Lynyrd Skynyrd in the tape deck. Different times.
Pop also taught me how to play football, basketball, tennis, golf and baseball. Understand, he taught me how to play, not necessarily how to be a good player. In those early days I was a pitcher and dad always thought it was a good idea to send a message to the other team, early. Always wanting to please him, I usually hit the first batter of every game. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Since those games were only five innings, a better approach would have been to concentrate on getting 15 outs but at that level, a baseball game is a true three outcomes: strikeouts, walks, and errors.
Dad played a little baseball in high school, for Paradise (KS) High, which no longer exists. He transferred to Palco High School before his junior year and had more success as a linebacker on a competitive Roosters football team. The team colors were black and gold and they looked a bit like the Pittsburgh Steelers. Palco still has a high school. They have the fourth-smallest enrollment in the state of Kansas. Between grades 9-12, the Roosters have 19 students. They also have one of the coolest mascot names.
After high school, dad moved on to town team basketball and softball, fast and slow pitch. In March of 1971, their basketball team played the Kansas City Chiefs’ traveling basketball team. This gave our small town its first and only close-up look at the first Chiefs’ dynasty. Guys like Buck Buchanan, Bobby Bell, Emmitt Thomas, Dave Hill, and Mike Livingston, just to name a few. A year and a half later, those guys would lose an epic game to the Miami Dolphins, the last football game played at Municipal Stadium. One dynasty ends; another begins.
The Brooklyn Dodgers were Dad’s favorite team when he was a youngster. He famously snuck a transistor radio into his classroom and was listening when Bobby Thompson hit his shot heard round the world which vanquished his beloved Boys of Summer. Growing up I heard many stories about the Bums and came to know Gil, Duke, Pee Wee, Campy, Jackie, Billy, Carl, Preacher, and Andy as if they were my favorite team. Dad later moved onto the Kansas City Athletic,s and once they packed up and moved, we both gravitated to the Royals.
By the time I was 15, I was playing with dad’s slow pitch team, mostly for lack of bodies. Plus, I could be counted on to be sober after the third inning. I don’t remember hitting much, but I was a hell of a designated driver. Different times. By the time I was 19, dad was pitching, and I was playing shortstop. We were only separated by 19 years, so we often had animated conversations on how to pitch opposing players. Playing in the Abilene city league, we played against a couple of brothers, good guys named the Needham brothers. The Needham brothers were very early adopters of launch angle and often hit balls that traveled well above the lights. At night, the ball would disappear, then reappear as gravity took hold. They would hit home runs every six or seven at-bats and Pop hated giving up home runs. I thought the trade-off was worth it, especially if no one was on base. We argued a lot about how to pitch the Needham brothers.
Dad took us to our first Royals game in August 1973. Steve Busby was a rising star for the Royals and a pitching role model of mine. George Brett was in his first week with the big club. This was the infamous Carl “bleeping” Yastrzemski game. The Royals prevailed by the score of 3-2 behind Hal McRae, who had a triple and one of the longest home runs I’ve ever seen hit at the stadium. Dad and my Uncle Larry had been polishing off an average of one Hamm’s an inning, so by the time the game ended, they were feeling good. It got to the point where the beer vendor just hung out at the top of the stairs of our section, a few rows behind us. Dad would raise his hand, and boom, he was there, pouring another. Easy money.
Dad survived a nasty truck crash in the spring of 1980. The crash wrecked his right shoulder and changed how he played softball and golf forever. In June of that year, I tore my left rotator cuff, so for a couple of weeks, we were stuck in the house together with matching shoulder slings. The summer of 1980 was one of the hottest summers I can remember, so we stayed in the house, watching the Cubs every day and getting fat. In the fall, I came back to watch the ALCS with him, and we rejoiced as George took Goose Gossage deep to deliver the Royals to their first World Series. We shared many memories of the Royals in those days, the Chambliss heartbreaker and the Pine Tar game come to mind.
The last baseball game we attended together was July 25, 1999. The Royals were pretty horrible in 1999, finishing 64-97, but they had some hitters. They were playing the Oakland A’s that day, and the Athletics were decent. As you might expect, it was hotter than blazes that afternoon, and even though we were protected from the sun, tucked up under the overhang behind first base, all of us still went home with massive sunburns. The game? It was fantastic. The Royals mounted an improbable comeback, and Jermaine Dye walked it off in the bottom of the tenth with a booming home run. There weren’t a lot of fans left by that time, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the K louder.
Over the years, dissecting the Royals' season remained one of our favorite topics. We Facetimed on the Sunday before he died and talked about how the Royals were scuffling and shared ideas on how they could turn it around. He fell ill on Monday, slipped into a coma around lunchtime, and never regained consciousness.
We moved to Iowa in July of 1989, and after unpacking the van, Dad and I went to this “baseball” movie that had been getting some rave reviews: Field of Dreams. It was the last movie we went to together. Over the years, we visited the movie site several times and even played catch on the field. Last week, I was back home helping my mom work on estate paperwork. After we finished, I turned on the TV and was flipping through the channels, and what should be on? Field of Dreams. Maybe Dad was sending some vibes from the other side. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Shirley MacLaine.
Grief is a strange thing. Most days I do okay. Other days not so much. I’m going to miss our talks. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that the person you relied most on for advice is gone. Now you’re the man. There is no safety net any longer.
Grief doesn’t knock at your door and ask you to come in - it kicks the door down and makes itself at home, whether you want it to or not. I’m back at work, I’m writing a little, I’m mowing my lawn. Life doesn’t stop even though you think it should.
Late last week I stepped into the shower and turned the water on hot. Suddenly, I felt like I’d been hit with a baseball bat. I sat down in the tub and cried and cried until the water ran cold.