Father's Day: A memory

 Went out to an area winery last night -- beautiful place, with an open field and woods at the back and a pond and live music -- and a boy walked past our table at one point.

Took me right back to the neat brick home on the southeast side where I grew up. 

The kid was wearing a ball cap with shades propped on the bill, see. And he was carrying not one but two baseball mitts.

The significance of the latter was not lost on me.

It suggested, see, that at some point on this soft June evening he and his dad were going to walk out to that open field and have a catch, and that's where it took me back to 3029 Castle Drive. Because every so often in the summer my dad and I would go out in the backyard, and he'd lob a baseball at me, and I would swing and miss.

"Swing level," he'd say. "Don't try to kill it."

Then he'd lob the ball to me again, and I'd swing level. And I'd miss again.

I've told this story before. It was six years ago, when Dad passed. It served to illustrate the fact that our relationship was different from some fathers and sons, partly because Dad was never much of a sports fan, and partly because his son had the athletic ability of a kumquat. I was never gonna be that kid who hit home runs or jump shots or the tight end up the seam with a laser pass, and he was never gonna be the proud dad sitting in the stands cheering me on.

That was OK, though. We bonded over other things -- nerding out on the Civil War; finding value and fascination in the past and its various relics -- and I like to think he got to be a proud dad anyway when (weirdly or not) I grew up to be a sportswriter and he got to see my name in the paper every day.

"I don't know how you do what you do," my dad, a master electrician and even more masterful woodworker, used to say. Or words to that effect.

"Well, I don't know how you do what you do," replied his son, who would have either electrocuted himself or sacrificed a finger to the Clumsy Gods if he'd tried to fix a broken circuit or whittle a piece of wood into something exquisite.

And then we'd laugh.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Think about you often; miss you always.