The End of Summer

As my girls and I were walking our dog the other day, I spotted a lone firefly blinking his way through the dusk. He was floating around the rear bumper of an old Buick, perhaps looking for his friends. I watched his self-illumination with longing, and wished him well as the dog pulled me away.

I guess that firefly didn’t get the memo. Either that, or he was granted one of life’s greatest gifts – an eternal summer. Ah, perchance to dream.

For those of us not living in San Diego or Miami, summer does come to an end every year. We try to ignore it, but those fireflies depart so that fallen leaves and carved pumpkins can take center stage. Baseball’s regular season gives way to baseball’s playoffs, which yield to pro football. It’s a different season, with different rhythms.

Most of us who work as educators in the Northeast have started school this week. The first week of school always feels like you’re going from zero to 75 miles per hour in about 10 seconds flat. Even if we’ve spent days preparing our rooms and curricula, there are just so many new variables that can only arise when those students first walk in the door. They’re here now, and the marathon has started – as it always does – with a sprint. But we will manage our new challenges as they arise, and make sure we’re nurturing our new students in all the right ways. It’s what we do.

And as we do so, we’ll glance over our shoulders and notice summer cruising away. Maybe it’s attached to that Buick, with the firefly serving as escort. Most likely, though, it’s somewhere we simply can’t be right now – like down in the Caribbean, or out in the desert. Last weekend, my wife and I took the girls to the USS Intrepid museum on the West Side of Manhattan. It was fascinating to be on an aircraft carrier and inside a submarine, and the girls enjoyed it quite a bit. But every time we stood on the port side of the ship, we all found our eyes drifting to the giant cruise ship docked just north of the Intrepid. This Carnival ship was boarding for a late-afternoon departure. Some passengers sat in the boat’s restaurant, visible through tinted windows. Others walked around the place, checking out their home for the week. Still others sat on their balconies, staring at us.

It was just too much to take – these lucky souls, boarding their ship for a summer extension. Finally, we turned away, and began walking southbound along Hudson River Park. We stopped to watch some tiny waves lap up against rocks and soda bottles near the Circle Line dock. We watched bicyclists and in-line skaters zoom past us. The girls got to pet a horse from the police department’s mounted squad. And then, as we neared the end of our sun-drenched, late-summer walk, I overheard two women talking as they strolled by us.

“I love the Dairy Queen near me,” one woman said, “because it only accepts cash. That way, I can’t stop there unless I have the money on me.”

The other woman nodded, about to say something. And then they were gone. I had no interest in eavesdropping, so I kept walking. But I took some small consolation in the fact that this conversation was every bit about summer. I could taste that Blizzard – soft-serve vanilla with bananas, please – as we made our way back to Penn Station.

Summer is a collection of strikingly vivid details, photographed with slow exposure. We savor these details, filled as they are with wonder, serenity and – cue the ice cream – even temptation. But this season always manages to leave us. And, like any great romance, the longing makes us love it all the more when it comes back.

A Waterlogged American Dream

So much for the American Dream. The two-story Colonial, the wraparound porch, the white picket fence, the backyard garden. Who needs a mortgage when you’ve got hurricanes with which to contend? Here in the Northeast this week, homeowners are dreaming more of an end to the flooding, the sewage backups, the dampness and the fallen trees. They’re dreaming of having their power back. They’re dressing like fly fishermen just to walk out in their streets.

In our home, Amy and I were lucky. We pulled our first all-nighter in some time Saturday as we worked to save our basement. After about 10 hours, 50 towels, dozens of buckets of water and hundreds of broom sweeps, we kept the water from destroying our finished basement.

But we were lucky. We had the chance to fight off the water. For those in nearby New Jersey towns such as Cranford, Paterson and Manville, there was simply no way to stop the rush of water that Hurricane Irene brought with her. For these families, there will be a long road back to normalcy. It is the same all along the East Coast, from Vermont to North Carolina. For some families, there are also individuals to bury in the days after this vicious storm. Talk about a week.

In most of New Jersey, the streets are now passable, although nearly every curb is filled with giant tree branches. For those still without power, the hum of generators can be heard, and extension cords stretch across the street as neighbor helps neighbor. What looks like a midweek yard sale is actually a family’s basement belongings, drying out on the lawn. Most traffic lights are working again, and war stories can be overheard in workplaces, libraries, stores and parks.

It’s been a tough five years for U.S. homeowners. For nearly a decade, Americans were able to make hefty profits from their homes as real-estate prices soared and lenders doled out cash by the bundle. But since the mortgage bubble burst, the American Dream has given way to a bevy of foreclosures, a huge dip in most families’ equity, and a realization that your starter home will likely be your finishing home as well. On top of all that, many regions of America have suffered from severe natural disasters, from New Orleans to Missouri to Alabama to Arizona to the entire Northeast.

So that brings us back to my initial point – what’s to make of the American dream? Should we be working so hard to buy our own homes anymore? Is it all really worth it? I’m 40 years old, and I’ve spent far more time this week thinking about French drains than French kissing. Is that really the sign of an improved quality of life?

Homes are a lot like kids, it seems – they’re a ton of work and money, they make you nervous, they require constant attention and tender-loving care, and – often when you least expect it – they make it all worthwhile. On Sunday night, as our endless day came to a close, a pink sunset decorated the western sky. I stood beneath that setting sun with my daughters, and they wore baseball gloves on their hands. As the swift breeze of Irene’s tail filled our lungs, we tossed a neon yellow softball back and forth. We had this peaceful catch in our own backyard, where we could laugh and talk and throw to our heart’s content. Katie pumped me some fastballs, then hopped inside. Chelsea stayed out awhile longer, and she kept catching and throwing and chatting away. I listened, and caught her tosses.

It seemed like my 6-year-old could play catch all night. On this particular evening, her dad definitely could not do the same. As we finished our catch and walked inside, I heard the crickets starting their song in the gathering darkness. Inside, I heard the running water of two girls brushing their teeth. I walked upstairs to sing my daughters to dreamland in their bunk bed, and, after a few songs, I heard the soft breath of sleep.

In the end, it can be a house, a condo, an apartment, or a FEMA trailer. It’s not the home that makes up the American Dream. It’s the living that goes on inside and outside it. I’ll hold onto my house, all right. (I might even add one of those fancy French drains.) Because in the end, the fury of a hurricane can’t hold a candle to the love of a family. It’s not the American Dream that matters most; it’s the American spirit.

Fatherhood, D.C.

One of my favorite Bruce Springsteen lines comes from a lesser-known song from a few years ago, titled “Long Time Comin’.” At one point in the song, the narrator tells us at that he is expecting another child. As he lies beside his partner and feels the little one “kickin’ inside,” he promises himself, “I ain’t gonna f--- it up this time.”

When my wife and I saw Springsteen perform this song in concert a few years ago, he told the audience that his older son, Evan, was in the audience. Springsteen said his son had suggested that he tweak this particular lyric. The younger Springsteen felt the narrator should instead say, “I ain’t gonna f--- it up as much this time.”

It was a beautiful story to hear, as I thought about my own journey ahead with two daughters. Here was one of the most successful men in America, sharing an anecdote that carried with it two messages: One, that you can never get it completely right as a parent; and two, that when they’re old enough to size you up as a parent, your kids will probably forgive your flaws.

I’m nine and a half years into that parenting journey now, and it never gets easy. But it remains the most fulfilling and amazing thing I have ever done. This past weekend, Amy and I took our girls to Washington, D.C., for the first time. In a whirlwind three days that featured a ton of walking and a lot of memorable first for the girls, I also caught a glimpse into the ways I am both struggling and soaring as a parent.

We begin with a time when Daddy did, indeed, f--- it up a bit. When we arrived at the U.S. Capitol early Saturday morning, we were told that we had to throw out all the food we’d brought along for the day. Visitors cannot bring any food or drink into the Capitol, no matter how early you got up to make those sandwiches. I thought about all the money we were wasting, and grew flustered. The girls saw this, and they watched as Daddy sweated the small stuff. Then they watched as Mommy got mad at Daddy for this.

I come from a long line of small-stuff-sweaters, and I want Katie and Chelsea to know that there are times when you just have to let things roll. I want them to live the serenity prayer, and accept the things they cannot change. But they’re not going to do this if I don’t model it. As we move forward together, it’s an area where I know there’s work to be done. Eventually, I dropped our food and drink in the trash can, and we walked inside the Capitol to marvel at the rotunda. And for further proof that things do work out when you let the small stuff go, our need to buy lunch brought us to the most diverse and delicious museum cafeteria I’ve ever visited, at the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian.

So losing our lunch at the Capitol will not go down as my most impressive moment as a parent. However, there were other times during our Washington weekend when I faced fatherhood with a positive spark that even Teddy Roosevelt would admire. As we sat in the upper deck of Nationals Park yesterday to watch the Washington nine take on the Philadelphia Phillies, the mighty Phils took a one-run lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. I sat beside Katie, and told her about the different paths that the Nationals and Phillies were on – for Washington, the goal is to build a winner; for Philadelphia, the mandate is to win now. As Phillies reliever Antonio Bastardo mowed down the first two Washington batters in the ninth, I told Katie about some times in baseball history when teams have tied games with two outs in the ninth. We watched as Washington’s Ian Desmond flailed at the first two pitches from Bastardo, and noticed as tens of thousands of visiting Phillies fans stood up and clapped.

And then, somehow, Ian Desmond found a pitch he could hit hard. Very hard. As the ball rocketed off his bat and into the left-field seats, Katie and I leapt to our feet. We exchanged high-fives. She jumped up and down, then took my new Nationals hat from me and put it on her head. The Phillies fans quietly took a seat. One inning later, as the Nationals won the game on the very rare walk-off hit-by-pitch, Katie cheered again. One sunset later, as we took I-95 northward through the dusk, Katie was still asking me questions about baseball. About the Red Sox, Yankees and Babe Ruth. About the Cubs and the billy goat. About the intense allegiance of Phillies fans.

“Daddy,” Katie said before drifting off to sleep in the backseat, “at your high school, you should teach a class on the history of baseball.”

My girls may not end up loving baseball like I do; I hold no expectations either way. But in a ballpark in Southeast D.C., I offered Katie a glimpse of what it’s like to feel passionate about something. And it was contagious. She felt the vibe, and left Nationals Park on a high.

Maybe for Katie and Chelsea, the passion will be art, or swimming, or engineering, or chess. Whatever it is, I just hope it’s there. And when I see that glimmer in their eyes, and hear the thrill in their voices, I’ll hope that my own love for things like baseball and writing has helped make their own passions possible.

When that happens, it’ll be a long time comin’. And it’ll be one of those moments when I’ll know I didn’t f--- it up as much this time.

A Steinbeck Summer

Each summer, I try to read a classic novel that I’ve never gotten around to reading. This year, I decided on The Grapes of Wrath. I’ve always considered myself a big fan of John Steinbeck, but I decided that I could no longer make such a claim without reading his most famous book. Now it’s true that the best-known chronicle of life in the Great Depression doesn’t exactly make for typical beach-reading. But then again, the summer of 2011 is not your typical summer.

Our government leaders point fingers at one another while millions of workers search for jobs. Our retirement accounts sit in peril while the Dow Jones industrial average loops up and down like a Six Flags roller coaster. Foreclosed homes and defaulted mortgages pile up like stacks of broken beach chairs and umbrellas beside a garbage can in the sand. Vital programs created to help those in need are tossed aside like old paperbacks, while tax incentives to help the wealthy are preserved like Kindles inside tight leather covers.

It’s a summer that sounds and looks a lot like the America depicted in John Steinbeck’s novel. Steinbeck writes of giant farms that grossly underpay migrant workers, of banks that corrupt our economy out of greed, and – most importantly – of individuals who somehow survive all of this by constantly helping one another, even when that help puts their own lives at risk. More than 70 years after Steinbeck’s novel, it’s very easy to find Americans pointing fingers at one another in 2011. What’s much harder is finding leaders like Ma Joad, Tom Joad and Jim Casy, who lived and worked with an eye toward equality, brotherhood and fairness.

The economic, social and political connections can clearly be made between The Grapes of Wrath and this American summer. Yet, as I read this novel, I also found myself making a personal connection of a different sort. Throughout the book, there is a constant contrast between the visual beauty of the American land and the appalling sight of struggle and suffering. As difficult as it can be to read of death and destruction in the midst of economic peril, Steinbeck makes sure we also know that this country has not lost its aesthetic beauty. Not by a long shot.

“The spring,” he writes, “is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes, swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants. And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit …”

As I read this novel, I sat in a beach chair overlooking a shimmering ocean, dotted by white sailboats, gray dolphins and foamy waves. Later on, while walking the beach with my family one evening, white ghost crabs popped out of little holes in the sand all around us. As my wife and I took a friend out for a kayak ride a few days later, we watched migratory birds fly above us to the comfort of marshland, and we felt the refreshing kiss of water on our hands and feet.

It’s the time of year in which many of us take more time than usual to notice the astounding beauty of whatever slice of America we call home for the summer, or for the week. We walk beneath the lamplights on a cobblestone street, or watch the half-moon as it glistens off the waves, or feel the caress of a mid-August breeze while licking our soft-serve cone. Wherever we are in America, that beauty is always around us, with the same kind of mystical comfort present in Tom Joad’s promise to forever be with his mom in the final pages of The Grapes of Wrath: “I’ll be ever’where – wherever you look.”

In the 72 years since John Steinbeck published his most famous novel, there has been no solution to the differing agendas of rich and poor Americans. That is most definitely a work in progress. But those words Steinbeck shared with us about the American pastoral still ring true as we look out upon the countryside, the seascape, and the rolling hills of 21st-century America. If we could all find a way to work together as effectively as this natural world does, we might just make it through. All of us. Your land; my land: you and me.

Down in a Hole

The kid didn’t ask for much; he just stood next to me with a metal shovel in his hand. My nine-year-old nephew had his lotion and bathing suit on, and he wanted me to take him to the beach. To dig.

He wanted to pick a spot in the sand and dig the biggest hole ever. Bigger than any he had ever dug before. I’d been in on some of those earlier holes, and they weren’t anything to sneeze at. But this was going to be the greatest hole that Connor had ever made. And he wanted my help. Like Barack Obama and John Boehner, this was our chance to “do something big.” But unlike our president and House speaker, no one was going to stand in our way.

And so we dug. It started at 11 a.m., and the digging quickly moved from smooth, white sand to brown, moist sand. Rocks and shells began to surface, making the work more difficult. But the kid wasn’t fazed by a thing. We widened the hole as we dug deeper, and eventually made steps so we could get in and out. We took turns, as there was room for only one digger at a time. We put stakes in the sand around the hole to notify others that this was a construction site. Occasionally, we took ocean swim breaks to refresh ourselves.

By 4 p.m., the hole was deeper than my nephew is tall. Almost five feet of digging, all in the glorious bright sun of July’s final day. By the time he had finished, Connor felt very proud of himself. He would have kept digging, too, had it not been time to head back for dinner. He posed for some photos, jumped into the hole one more time, then worked with his mom and me to fill the hole back up with sand.

As we worked, the English teacher in me surfaced just a bit. “Connor, do you know what ‘endurance’ means?” I asked. We talked about the word, and compared the runner of a sprint to the runner of a marathon. “The marathon runner needs endurance to go all that way,” I said. “Today, you’ve got endurance with the way you’re digging this hole.” He understood the point, and when I asked him about it again this morning, he remembered the word and its meaning.

Endurance. It’s definitely a buzzword in baseball this time of year. Which teams have the endurance to plow through those dog days of summer? Can they stay cool in the heat and keep their focus? Are they able to hang in there for the grueling marathon of six months and 162 games? In the end, having the opportunity to win in baseball or any other sport is all about one thing – how far you’re willing to dig.

We’ll find out who baseball’s best diggers are as August unfolds. I can tell you this, though – whatever those athletes do on the diamond this summer, they won’t impress me as much as Connor did yesterday. I saw endurance with my own eyes, and it was about as impressive as watching a kid dig all the way to China.

An Afternoon with Yogi

He walks more gingerly than he used to, and he talks more softly than he once did. But his smile, his sense of humor, and his easygoing manner are all still there, as they’ve been for the 65 years that he’s been in the public eye.

I got the chance to meet Yogi Berra yesterday, thanks to the generosity of a friend and colleague. My friend Hedy invited me to the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center on the campus of Montclair State University to watch the 86-year-old Yankee legend respond to interviews from high school students, as part of a sports broadcasting camp. The camp, which Hedy helps coordinate, is run by her brother, David Siroty, as well as sports journalists Bruce Beck, Ian Eagle, Dave Popkin and Mike Quick. It’s an extraordinarily impressive camp, as evidenced by the quality of the students’ work and the dedication of the experienced teachers.

So as a guest of the camp, I sat in the auditorium of Yogi’s museum and watched him sit down in a white folding chair, a Yankees cap atop his head and a Yankees jacket over his polo shirt. He held his cane in his hands and listened closely to every student’s question.

It was fascinating to watch Yogi handle the questions. Sometimes, he’d give a direct answer, such as when one student asked, “Yogi, was Jackie Robinson safe or – ” “Out!” the former catcher barked before that question could even be completed. Robinson’s famous steal of home during Game One of the 1955 World Series between the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers still stokes the competitive fire within Berra. Another student asked, “Yogi, what did you tell Derek Jeter after his 3,000th hit?” Yogi: “I told him it was about time.”

Most of Yogi’s answers, though, were not as direct. More often than not, Yogi took the student’s question as more of an invitation to tell a story. Somewhere in that story was an answer to the question. But in essence, the question was more of an opportunity for Yogi to reminisce. For instance, after sharing his humorous compliment to Jeter about that 3,000th hit, Yogi then started telling the students that he’s also joked with Jeter in the past about swinging at (and missing) high fastballs: “I asked him, ‘Why did you swing at those high ones?’ ” Yogi recalled. “[Jeter] said, ‘Well, you swung at them.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but I hit them.’ ” When asked about his batting style, Yogi didn’t speak about his three MVP awards or his 358 home runs. Instead, he brought us back to 1950, and told us that he’d come to bat 597 times that year and struck out only 12 times. He said he retired in 1965 after just nine at-bats because he struck out three times in one game. That’s how he knew it was time. “I retired that day,” he said.

When asked about his best and worst moments with George Steinbrenner, Yogi smiled, sighed, and brought his listeners back to the early 1980s. He told stories about young players whom the late Yankees owner traded away (such as outfielder Willie McGee) or threatened to demote (such as Dave Righetti). Yogi eventually got around to sharing his good moments with Steinbrenner, but only after telling us that Willie McGee (who retired when these students were toddlers) was a great talent, and that he was traded to the Cardinals for a pitcher named Bob Sykes. McGee smacked more than 2,000 hits in his career, while Sykes never pitched a game for New York. Yogi remembers that.

It’s the details like this – McGee for Sykes – that always amaze me when I’m listening to one of my elders talk. For years, the vivid storyteller in my life was my grandfather, Warren Mueller. Many of my grandfather’s stories were about baseball, too, as he played professionally in the Boston Braves’ minor-league system during the 1940s, then played semipro ball for years afterward. My brother and I would ask my grandfather so many questions about his playing days, and he’d remember the details of a game in 1944 better than he could recall what he’d eaten for breakfast that day. He always seemed grateful that his grandchildren wanted to know so much about his life, and he never stopped telling us stories. He told us about the tryout he had with the Brooklyn Dodgers at age 18, about the games he pitched with the Hartford Senators in 1944 and ’45, about the exhibition game in which he pitched against Joe DiMaggio in ‘46, and about the flourishing semipro baseball scene on Staten Island in the 1940s (done in by television, he’d always say). Just two days before he died, my grandfather told me for the first time that he’d pitched against Jimmie Foxx.

Warren Mueller has been gone for almost five years. My brother and I miss his voice, his laugh, and the stories he told. I didn’t know what to expect from yesterday’s visit to hear Yogi Berra – I’m not really big on star-gazing, and I had plenty of interviews with famous people during my work as a journalist. But what I ended up hearing from Yogi was some of my grandfather’s voice inside of his. Sure, the details were different, and they involved the most famous team in the history of American sport. But the rhythm and the purpose for these stories were the same.

All the campers and teachers took pictures with Yogi afterward, and David got me in for a photo as well. My photo looks silly, as I’m not posing and smiling for the camera. Instead, I’m standing there talking with Yogi. I shook his hand, introduced myself, and blurted out a few sentences about how much I appreciated the job he had done managing the 1984 Yankees. That team was out of contention early and brought up their best prospects in the summer for a long audition. I was 13, and at the apex of my childhood fascination with baseball. “You let the kids play,” I told Yogi, “just like the Mets have to do this year.” He smiled back, and said something that I couldn’t hear amid the din of the auditorium.

It may seem strange that I botched a photo with Yogi Berra. But I think I know what was going on there. I wasn’t really trying to talk with Yogi in that moment. I think I was just trying to get in a few more words with my grandfather.

Yogi, I’m sure, understood. When one student asked him how he felt about being honored at Yogi Berra Day more than 10 years ago, the man in the Yankees cap started to choke up as he remembered the day. “I’m getting emotional right now,” he said.

Mortality is more real and lasting than any home run or tag at the plate. That’s why we tell stories, and that’s why we listen.

Play Ball, Baby Doll

There have been a lot of baby dolls roaming around the house this July. While my girls have spent part of their summer dancing through the sprinkler, riding the ocean waves and swimming with friends at the pool, another part of their summer has been spent changing diapers and pushing carriages. One plays with an American Girl doll, while the other has a life-size infant doll, with frighteningly real facial features.

Daddy’s not much for dolls. I watch them, and feign interest when they tell me how “Amanda needed a nap,” or “Abby wants to go for a walk around the house,” but really I don’t like baby dolls much. Every parent has a terrifying fear of the child walking up to them at age 16 with the words, “I’m pregnant.” So the sight of my daughters practicing parenting is not exactly a dream scenario.

Of course, girls aren’t the only ones interested in pint-sized versions of themselves. From Muppet Babies to Cabbage Patch Kids, boys and girls alike have been drawn to reenact their own childhoods by caring for and watching fictional babies. As I sat in a bookstore the other day, I even came across a new comic book titled “Hulk-Sized Mini-Hulks.” I was stunned – at the content, the repetitive nature of the title and the spot-on proper use of hyphens. The comic book involved the exploits of three toddler Hulks – one green, one blue, one red. Every story was one page long, and every tale was easy for kids to follow. Hulk-Sized Mini-Hulks. At a store near you.

So maybe I was just one of those kids who never felt the need to tickle little Elmo or cuddle a baby doll. But I can recall a thing or two about using toys to while away a summer’s day. In the case of my brother and me, the object of our focus was Star Wars figures. The original three Star Wars films were a mutual passion of ours, not to mention most of the boys in America, during the late 1970s and early ’80s. Sometimes, Eric and I would re-create Star Wars scenes or craft new ones of our own.

But during the summer, with baseball fresh on our minds, we’d put these figures to work playing ball. With the legs of one of the figures, we’d draw the shape of a baseball diamond on the brown shag carpet in our living room. Then we’d divide the Star Wars figures into two teams, and we’d sit the figures down in the nine positions found on a baseball diamond. Eric would then grab one of the cannonballs that came with the Ewok figures from Return of the Jedi, and we’d use that as a baseball. One of us would toss the cannonball toward home plate, and the other would sit behind the plate holding a Star Wars figure’s head. As the pitch came in, we’d whip the legs of the batting figure forward, and the cannonball would fly.

What next, you might ask? Well, if the cannonball struck one of the position players, it was recorded as an out. If it landed untouched, it was a base hit or, in the case of a ball that fell beyond the outfield wall, a home run. My mother shook her head at this sight, and walked away. But we plowed on, and even kept statistics. Somehow, a little Ewok named Wicket W. Warrick led the league in home runs. He was a tiny, bear-like thing, and I think Eric liked him so much that he tried harder to hit home runs with Wicket at the plate. The toothy Gamorrean guards (protectors of Jabba the Hut) were a close second in the home-run race. Their girth played a role in their ability to launch one out of the “park,” not unlike Greg “Bull” Luzinski, who was finishing his career with the White Sox at that time.

That was a long time ago. I don’t play Star Wars baseball anymore. As I watch two little ones scamper about the house, I have yet to see them hold any home-run derbies with Amanda and Abby. They’ve been a lot more low-key than Eric and I were in our day. But hey, if Daddy ever feels the urge, he could try and draw up a diamond on the Pottery Barn carpet. We could roll up one of the doll’s socks for a ball, and make a little bat out of cardboard. The girls could even learn scorekeeping while we play.

But then, when the bases are loaded and Daddy’s really getting into this, someone’s going to need a diaper change. And off the girls will go, into their creative and nurturing worlds. I’ll clean up the mess, then vacuum the carpet so my wife doesn’t see any evidence when she gets home.

And I’ll go back to age 40, with just a little more affection in my heart for Amanda and Abby. Hey, the kid could hit; I’ll give her that.