Can of Corn Challenge: An early baseball memory (April)

My father wasn’t much of a baseball person.

I don’t recall a lot of memories many young boys have with their fathers in regard to baseball. I am pretty sure we might have gone to a minor league game or two as a kid. But I remember being in Philadelphia and left behind when my father and grandfather took my older brothers to a game at the Vet. I do recall getting a Larry Bowa giveaway shirt, though.

I don’t have memories of playing catch with my father, though in later years, there are some fond memories on the golf course together.

But I do have a pretty vivid baseball memory of him. It was 1982 and I was 8 and playing in the younger division of the local “little league.” My father was the chief of police in town, so he usually worked during the days and such.

For the 1982 season, though, he coached our little league team with another father or two. I do remember him at games, wearing a cap, in jeans and a short-sleeve shirt and doing the best he could as coach. I can still picture him, when the tattoos he got when in the Air Force (on his arms) were a little more vivid and vibrant. I can see him watching the game as it unfolded.

As an 8-year-old on that team, it was an important memory.

I think what is even cooler, though, was that we won the championship that year. I still have the tiny plaque we received for winning that year (something I again experienced five years later – but my father wasn’t the coach of that team), and it’s something I’ve though back on several times.

So despite never learning how to score a game, or have daily catches in the summer with my father, there’s an important memory as a youngster where I shared baseball with him.

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