Having a Catch with Your Father
I know this is supposed to be about hitting and batting gloves. Here’s a story that caught my eye about a kid and his father and that first glove. Do girls softball players have the same recollection when they get older?
There’s something precious about ones first baseball glove. If you ever met me personally, you’d probably not expect me to be described as a very big fan of baseball. You see, I am not very athletic, and I have never been very athletic. I’m really an egghead essentially. I like math, chess, along with video games. As a point of fact, on your typical day I am more prone to play a baseball video game than play catch. Even now, there is one thing about my own baseball glove that makes it so significant to me that words and phrases won’t capture it: the connection it gave me personally to my dad.
You see, playing catch is something that fathers and sons were doing in this country for generations, and it is something that they will continue doing for several more years. A baseball mitt is really a means for a small boy to connect with his father. My dad was a really typical American father. He was sort of private and strict, and had a very hard time relating his feelings. Whenever we were outdoors with each other and played catch with our baseball gloves, however, I realized just how much I meant to him. Baseball gloves – and baseball generally speaking is designed for that. It might bring people together who would probably not be able to converse as freely otherwise.
My dad knew that I didn’t want to be on any baseball team and, to his credit, he never ever compelled me to join. All I wished to do was to play catch with him and go around, as well as sometimes shoot hoops along with my buddies. My own child is different than I used to be at that age. He enjoys anything and everything that has to do with athletics, and I don’t know where he received it from. Never the less, when I got him his very first baseball glove, he looked at me with the identical look of joy that I afforded my father when he bought me one. At that point, I realized that he really was and truly my boy, and I was his father.
We’d play catch daily that summer, him along with his new, shiny baseball mitt, and myself with my good old, worn down one. It was often a silent point in time, but it really was always lots of fun. I believe that it may have been the best summer since when I was a kid.
