Summers to Harridge, April 20, 1950: I am writing to inform you of the changes in the Washington ball park. It is rather difficult to explain but I will try to give you a picture.

Maybe you

I hated practice, but I loved you.

Can’t afford a ticket? Put up a player and get in free.

By late ‘88 I had mastered Eck’s three-quarter delivery...

Well, if you're reading lips, you'll hear some words that are not necessarily used on family TV.

She grips the bat the proper way, the way Dad taught her. Right over left, the knuckles lined up like railroad tracks or piano keys, two of Dad’s many analogies thought up on the fly. Yet another:

It’s good, I think, that we forget.

Then she cupped my face in her hands just like my father and said, “You’re missing it!”

The year everyone was hitting home runs, Barry Bonds made lunch with his arms.

I kissed my father’s cheek for good luck in the firehouse driveway.

It was a slow curve—a big bender,
spinning against the trajectory
of the ball. It hung

The victim was the leadoff hitter for the Matsushima Baseball Ocean Temple Gods in the bottom of the first.

His gravesite at Holy Cross Cemetery brought a lump to my throat.

Because fifteen feet and a quarter-sized hunk of aluminum is nothing against the smell of oiled leather...

Just mid-February but a day like summer

I saw Candy the next time I went out. And the time after that. And the time after that.

I suppose all sports officials are gods of a sort...

After a loss, I’d seen him throw his gear in the garbage and denounce baseball altogether.

Crack! The sound of impact, ball on bat...

In the original cut of the movie, Ray says, “You wanna have a catch?” But test audiences were disappointed with the complete lack of father-son acknowledgement.

Later I’ll tell him that in baseball you never know where the ball will go...

My friends lived for bottle rockets and Boy Scout merit badges; I, however, lived for called third strikes.

Ron's list of aggravations has only grown over time. My job was to just quietly field them.

I couldn’t cut my hair (I’m no sheep) and I sure as hell couldn’t change my love of the Houston Astros.

I ended up in right field, ponytail eschew, cap falling to the bridge of my nose, shadowing my freckled cheeks.