Triple Play

I have three stories to record for posterity today, all have a tie to baseball, all are about my personal life. If you don’t care about my personal life (and why should you), come back another day. If curiosity gets your goat, read on McDuff!

The first occurred at about 1:30 today. I’m stuck at home today with two sick boys. The youngest, age almost 17 months, has a fetish for books of all kinds. His faves are the touch and feel types. You know, a picture of a basket has some wicker glued on to the page so a kid can touch it. Well, one of the books we have in that series is about baseball (link for Christian!). He picks up the book, walks over to me and says, “BAY BAHH!” Very cool.

The second, occurred last Sunday. I told the 4 1/2 year old that this was the last football game of the year. He said, “What comes next? Oh yeah. Baseball!” This is with no prompting from Dad. Very, very cool!

The third is not cool. Last Friday morning, I got a call from a old high school friend. She told me that a mutual friend had a sudden, massive heart attack that morning and had died. He was 38. Now this was a guy that I hadn’t seen in years. I was friends with him back in the early 80’s and was very close friends with his sister. He had three kids: 11, 9 and 5. He was a TREMENDOUS sports fan with a heavy heart for the Cubs. He vended at Wrigley back in high school. After he graduated he spent his summers at Wrigley. In 1984, he told me he went to 40 games. All between May and August.

This one hit me hard. It can happen to any of us at any time. I think back to Monday evening at my friend’s house after the funeral. I saw my friend’s eleven year old son as the Rabbi led evening services. He had a faraway look in his eyes, but gently rested his head on his mom’s stomach. I look at my boys and those two little very cool things that happened.

They aren’t little things. I hope I get as much time as possible to see these little things. I hope we all do. I don’t want any of us to miss this little stuff – the little stuff that’s unbelievably important when you really get down to it.

BAY BAHH!!! You said it, kid.