By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Baseball is a game that is not a mere game. Filmmaker Ken Burns once called it “an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father and grandfathers.” I think he may be right.
Baseball’s opening day each spring inevitably reminds me about my own family’s many attachments to the Great American pastime. These are latent ancestral bonds, formed long before I was alive but that awakened when I was a child and then a father.
My great uncle was a wealthy businessman and close friend with the legendary New York Yankees baseball player Babe Ruth. He was with the Ruth family when the Babe died in 1948.
Other family members affiliated with the owners of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Perhaps they saw Jackie Robinson play his first big league game seventy-five years ago on April 15, 1947 at old Ebbets Field.
Even my family of choice, the monks from the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, loved baseball. My friend Brother Boniface Ptasienski from New York idolized Yankees all-star catcher Bill Dickey. Father Patrick Boyle watched Stan Musial hit a home run for the St. Louis Cardinals before he boarded a westbound train and joined the abbey in 1950.
My own affection for baseball is not based on geography, for we never lived close enough to any major league teams to build regional bonds. Instead, as explained in my new book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021), I discovered baseball because of a miracle…the “Miracle Mets.”
My first real memory of major league baseball is watching pitcher Tom Seaver and the underdog New York Mets win the 1969 World Series. My sister Karen and I also cheered for Roberto Clemente and the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1971 World Series, and then mourned when a plane crash killed Clemente as he brought relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
After these fine introductions to the sport, we attended several minor league games of the Ogden Dodgers, the rookie-level farm baseball team. Our home team played in the Pioneer League, at a rickety old wooden stadium called John Affleck Park near the railroad tracks on the industrial west side of town.
It was a ramshackle setting, but one that the team regularly outshined. Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Dodger legend Tommy Lasorda coached them to several Pioneer League championships in the 1960s. His players included future major leaguers named Steve Garvey, Bill Buckner, and Bobby Valentine.
My own adventures in Little League baseball were not nearly so remarkable. In third grade, my family signed me up for the local Ogden Catholic league. I played for the Robins, a nice enough team name that never struck much fear into the hearts of our opponents.
The coach made me the shortstop, even though half of the ground balls hit my way shot right past my mitt or skidded between my legs. I was a better batter, but only because I was smart enough to figure out that very few pitchers in the league threw strikes.
Most of the time I stood at the plate and let them walk me. My strategy frustrated my family, although I think the movie Moneyball later vindicated my just-get-on-base tactics. They started loudly urging me to “swing” during those frequent at bats when I stood there and watched the balls fly by.
One time I followed their loud advice. I struck out.
Three decades later, I was the one watching in the bleachers after we signed up our young son, Daniel Patrick, for little league baseball. I refrained from offering much in the way of coaching, however, because others in our baseball orbit were better qualified.
My wife Vicki is a far better athlete than me. Her father (and Danny’s grandfather) Robert Comeau starred in baseball and football in high school and then later coached multiple sports at both the high school and college levels. He even got then-Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens to sign a baseball for Danny.
We also had many good friends who knew how to coach capably too. So, I settled into other more suitable roles. One of them was sports buddy.
Before our son was born, I only saw only one MLB game—the Mets at Shea Stadium. I doubled that up with Danny. We saw the Diamondbacks in Phoenix together and then, with most of the rest of the family joining us, we watched the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field. We also went to many local AAA games in Salt Lake City.
My other designated role was as a low key personal practice assistant. This job came open one day when Danny said he was frustrated about missing ground balls in the field. I offered to help. Thereafter, we devoted hundreds of hours to the endeavor.
I threw hundreds of ground balls, Danny fielded them. I threw fly balls, he caught them. I pitched plastic balls, Danny tried to hit them. We tracked personal bests and family records, such as consecutive catches and longest wiffle ball home run.
Those mornings, afternoons, and evenings of extra practice were pure parental bliss for me. We filled them with laughter, bragging, trash talk, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, but most of all time precious together. They are—by far—the favorite baseball memories of my lifetime.
If, as filmmaker Ken Burns has explained, baseball really is an odyssey, then that means it is a journey too. By definition, a journey involves travel, movement, and change. Change arrived for us in the eighth grade, when after almost a decade of playing baseball, Danny announced he wanted to play lacrosse instead.
His time. His body. His game. His choice.
We traded in our aluminum bats for some new and rather unusual equipment—a long stick with a cup/net attached to the end. I never quite mastered the art of holding a ball in that stick/net while running (or even standing), so my days as a principal practice assistant were over.
My wife and I learned to watch a new game with new rules. It was fun.
Danny played lacrosse (and football and basketball) all through high school. I must admit that there is something strangely amusing about watching teenage boys hit each other with sticks. Such action happens in baseball, of course, only when things have gone very wrong.
When Danny—our youngest—graduated from high school, two decades of watching our children in sports, concerts, dance performances, school programs, etc. came to an end. The transition was tough. We’d drive past little league baseball sites and wonder if the people there would care if two strangers climbed into the bleachers and pretended to know and cheer for someone on the field.
A few years later, while he still was in college, Danny came home one day. He started rummaging through the closet in his old room. He emerged holding his old baseball mitt, last used many years earlier.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m going to play baseball with some friends,” he said as he left.
I was surprised, but then I thought of Ken Burns. I just smiled.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
