Found
Posted by TFG on July 6th, 2007
As you might have gathered if you’re a regular reader, I’m in the process of moving from Dallas to San Antonio. So today I’m working on one of the thousands of closets I needed to pack, and I came across something I thought I’d lost years ago. It’s a baseball signed by Hank Aaron. It was given to me by a co-worker almost 10 years ago who had gotten it at some corporate function, yet wasn’t a baseball fan. He recognized what Hank Aaron meant to me, a baseball fan, though, so he passed it on.
I can tell you, I was thrilled today, even at 47 years old, to hold a baseball that had been in the hands of Hank Aaron. I feel like I’m 14 again. I’ve got goosebumps as I write this, and I get goosebumps reading about Hank’s chase of the Babe’s record. I get goosebumps thinking about Hank’s triumph. Which tells me that I still love baseball, really, deeply, no matter how much apathy I have for it at the moment.
I put that baseball back in the sock it was in, and I stuffed it deep in a box that I hope I can identify later, because I want to give that baseball to my grandson, and maybe talk to him about some of the great ballplayers I’ve seen in my life. That would be really good.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I can relate to that latent love of baseball, despite my apathy from time to time in recent years. I lived for baseball as a boy. Loved to play baseball, loved to watch it….lived and died by the fortunes of my beloved Cubs. Lately my nine year old son has been bitten by the same bug, and it gives me the goosebumps, especially because my older boys never gave a rat’s ass about our National Pastime. What a terrific thing you have to pass on to your Grandson…besides your priceless memories of great players seen…a tangible asset (so to speak) of the times…a ball signed by one of the greatest, who also has always been a first class gentleman as well as a great ballplayer. Too bad we can’t say the same about the guy chasing Hammerin’ Hank’s record now…but that’s a rant for another time…
July 9th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I’ve just come to to care so damn little for the game anymore, and it was once everything to me. A perfect life centered around season tix behind home plate, on the aisle. Now, though, I couldn’t care less, and I really try to care, very hard. It breaks my heart, intellectually, how much I don’t care, if that makes any sense.
Maybe this is a phase I have to go through, to realize what baseball really is. I hope yall can find something in it for the two of you, because it’s surely special.