The Power of Our Passions

            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.

When Movies Move Us

            Every year, the number of journalists covering the Academy Awards season seems to increase exponentially. We may have reached a point where more reporters are covering the Oscars than the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. These legions of experts are feeding us loads of predictions, including the not-so-surprising news that the best movie of 2014 may not win the award for Best Picture tonight.

            If that happens, and Richard Linklater’s masterpiece Boyhood fails to grab the award tonight, it will be nothing new. In recent years, it has become commonplace for the best film to lose out due to the peculiarities of Hollywood politics. Lincoln loses to Argo. The Social Network falls to The King’s Speech. Brokeback Mountain is upended by Crash. Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line are beaten by Shakespeare in Love.

            Of course, there is a long line of great films that didn’t win the Oscar; you don’t need that award to be considered a classic. From Goodfellas to Raging Bull, from E.T. to The Graduate, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Citizen Kane, it’s a prestigious list. And that’s not even counting the amazing films that weren’t even nominated (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Singin’ in the Rain, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, just to name a few).

            If you’ve seen Boyhood, you probably walked away from the film rather amazed by Linklater’s depiction of a child’s coming of age from first-grader to college freshman. As a parent whose oldest child’s first 12 years span the same dozen years in which the film was made, I found it even more stunning. And I can’t quite understand the criticism that this film doesn’t have a straight, linear plot. Because in these past 13 years of being a parent, I haven’t ever found our family’s story to ever be a tight, well-defined storyline.

            We do the best we can as parents and as kids, trying to negotiate the different individuals with whom we live, and the different situations we’re faced with in life. Sometimes we make mistakes – big ones, even – and sometimes things work out better than we even deserve. It’s a day-to-day journey, and there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring.

We go to school, and meet new kids. We change jobs or move to new homes. We argue at the dinner table. We hop in the car and go somewhere, and learn more about one another in the process. We dance to pop songs. We head out to baseball games, parties and bowling alleys together. We hold each other close.

            It’s a story, all right, but one that’s told better in snapshots than in structured narrative. It’s the kind of story that Boyhood shows us so beautifully. Give me a few minutes of my girls at each age, and I’ll remember the main themes of our lives together at that point. In fact, those brief moments will probably tell the story more authentically than anything else could.

            If you took a few snapshots of our family right now, you’d see a lot of different images. You’d see two girls hunkered over their homework at the kitchen table. A 42-year-old mom sitting at her laptop to prepare lesson plans for the week. A 44-year-old dad researching map routes for a summer cross-country trip with his family. A teenager fighting through the shifting hormones and anxieties that come with adolescence. A 10-year-old in love with reading, from Harry Potter to Judy Blume. Two sisters on the living room carpet, dancing to Taylor Swift. A husband and wife trying, somehow, to grab a couple of hours alone together – but settling, most of the time, for a half-hour chat while making tomorrow’s lunches in the kitchen.

            None of these images tell the whole story. But put a few of them together, and you’ve got what you need. In truth, there’s no way to tell the whole story of a life. Maybe that’s why Boyhood is so breathtaking – because it actually understands that. It sees the rich narrative in those moments.

In one scene, Ethan Hawke’s character is camping with his son Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane. They’re eating s’mores while talking about Star Wars, and whether there will ever be a seventh film. “Return of the Jedi, it’s over, there’s nothing,” Hawke says. “I mean, what are you going to turn Han Solo into a Sith Lord?” After watching the Star Wars films together, my 10-year-old and I had nearly the same conversation. And I know I’m not the only one. This doesn’t tell you anything specific about either of us, except that we both love Star Wars. But then again, it also tells you that we know how to talk with one another, and hang out, and pay attention to the things that draw us closer.

So tonight, they can give the Oscar to whatever film they want. We’ll fill out our Oscar ballots and enjoy the red carpet, the dresses, the envelopes and the speeches. But we won’t stress over who gets the trophy.

When you see a movie that speaks to you from somewhere deep within, you don’t need an award to validate that. In the end, I’ll take the movies that move me, and hold onto those for the long haul.