When people ask me if my girls like baseball as much as I
do, I have to be honest – they don’t. But in a lot of ways, that’s not really the
point.
When my brother and I spent our summer days immersed in
all things baseball as kids, it wasn’t just the love of a game that we were
developing. We were finding a passion, a hobby that we could hold onto for the
rest of our lives. That passion would assist us in so many ways during our own
personal growth, as passions often do.
When
we made friends in school, baseball served as a conversation-starter. When our
mother told us to read books over the summer, we often chose baseball
biographies. As we discovered our mutual passion for writing, we practiced that
skill by scribbling about baseball. And when we were in need of a thought to
help divert our minds from a fear, stressor or family crisis, our thoughts bent
toward the diamond.
As
an adult, I learned that when you have a passion for something, people are
energized by your expression of that hobby. My wife has always said that she
loves to go to baseball games with me, because she can see the glimmer in my
eyes. When I’m talking about baseball, friends and colleagues who know little
about the sport will listen intently to my stories. When I’m finished, they
often tell me I should write a book about baseball. Sometimes I tell them, yes,
I’m doing that. Other times, I just smile and nod and thank them.
My
daughters haven’t yet read the full manuscript I’ve written about coming of age
with baseball at my side. But they’ve seen the passion, and it rubs off on them
a bit. On Father’s Day, when we went to a minor-league game in Lakewood, N.J., my
10-year-old let me teach her how to keep score, and we sat in a big lifeguard
chair beyond the left-field fence and tallied the hits and walks and strikeouts
in our scorebook. When my wife and I gave our 13-year-old a Brett Gardner
T-shirt this spring, she researched the Yankees left fielder on her phone and decided
that he was a cutie. When I told her that Gardner had been named to the
All-Star team this month, she said she knew that already. She’s keeping tabs on
the guy.
So
whether or not we pass along the affection we have for a specific hobby, the
people around us still get something out of the energy we exude over it. Our
10-year-old may not know much about the Yankees, but Chelsea loves to talk
about Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Percy
Jackson and Harry Potter, and she’s finding a newfound interest in tennis. Our
13-year-old might not know who roams the New York outfield with Brett Gardner,
but Katie teaches me plenty about pop music, fashion, photography and, yes,
social media. When I’m teaching high school English and I describe the
Shakespearean complexity of Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez, my students might
not care a lot about that particular comparison, but it often helps them to
make their own text-to-life connections. Mr. Hynes, how about Tupac Shakur? Or Lance
Armstrong? Or Bill Clinton? All good, guys. All good.
So when I think about the role baseball plays in my life,
I see it as twofold: There are the personal thoughts and ideas I have while
thinking about the game, which have clearly meant a lot to me; and then there are
the little sparks of inspiration that others might gain from my enthusiastic discussions
of the sport. The people around me will do what they wish with those sparks,
but it’s exciting to know that my own spirited love for something has left even
the smallest mark on readers, colleagues, friends, students and family – and, yes,
even on two particular daughters.
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