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He awakened after the last pitch of the game, and asked: “Did the Cubs win, Dad?”
    “Uh, why, yes, son. Yes they did,” I answered. Falsely.
    Some fathers want to take their kids to ballgames because it reminds them so much of what they did with their own fathers. Not me. I don’t think I ever went to a baseball game with my father. We lived in a small town; to go to a baseball game you had to go all the way to Chicago, and no one in his right mind went to Chicago, a city filled with unspeakable traffic and hoodlums—not to mention Democrats! I don’t want to say we were provincial, but our high school foreign exchange student was from … America. Hawaii.
    I have fond memories of lying on the top bunk of the bed I shared with my brother, David, listening to Cardinals baseball games (and Cubs away games) on the radio in the dark while he gently bounced me off the ceiling. Harry Carey, Joe Garagiola and Jack Buck did the Cardinals’ broadcasts. There is something wonderful about listening to a baseball game on the radio in the dark.
    My brothers-in-law have similar memories of listening to ballgames on summer evenings on the porch in Indianapolis with their grandfather, who was always smoking a cigar. For the moment to be absolutely perfect, the game had to be an obscure one: maybe the Indians and the Orioles.
    I met a man in Chicago who loved listening to night games on the radio. He was a lifelong Tigers fan, who had been (tragically) transferred to Chicago at about age fifty. He’d put on his pajamas and drive to the western shore of Lake Michigan, where if he got his car lined up at just the right angle he could pick up Ernie Harwell’s broadcasts from Tiger Stadium.
    I tried doing that with Willie some, on our screened-in porch in Chicago, and he liked it all right, I guess, but after a while he would always say: “The game’s on TV, Daddy.”
    I know, son, I know.
    Bill Geist is the best-selling author of seven books including
Fore! Play, The Big Five Oh: Facing, Fearing and Fighting 50, Monster Trucks and Hair In A Can—Who Says America Doesn’t Make Anything Anymore?, Little League Confidential,
and
City Slickers.
He has contributed stories to numerous magazines ranging from
Rolling Stone
to
Forbes
to
Esquire.
Geist received two Emmy Awards for his work as a correspondent for
CBS News Sunday Morning.
Prior to joining CBS News, he was a columnist for
The New York Times.

Senior Year

DAN SHAUGHNESSY
    t was getting dark and I was standing in the parking lot beyond the rightfield fence at the high school baseball field. The kids call it “third lot.” It once provided parking for Newton North High School students, but that was before too many kids got cars, so now it’s reserved during school hours for faculty and seniors. At this moment, third lot was two-thirds empty, and the only remaining cars belonged to the players on the baseball team, plus a handful of parents and friends.
    I had my keys in my hand. I’d already said good-bye to my old high school coach, who’d made the drive down from New Hampshire to sit with me and watch my son play. It was a cold New England May day and the game was running long and I had to get going. I was due at a wake for the 21-year-old son of my cousin. The wake was taking place in the small town where I was born, an hour’s drive to the west, and the notice in the newspaper said visiting hours would be over at 7 p.m.
    It had been an emotional day, sitting on the cold metal slats, watching Sam hit, catching up with my old coach, and thinking about what my cousin Mickey was going through. I hadn’t seen Mickey in over a year. We were never especially close. That happens when you have fifty-one first cousins and move away after college. But it was easy to remember everything I admired about Mickey. He was a terrific high school athlete, only two years older than I. He seemed to be better than everyone else at everything. Football. Basketball. Skiing. He was strong,