The picture above is repeated, over and over again, at every Cubs game that’s ever been played. And it’s not hard to understand why, either.
Baseball has endured by being passed down from one generation to another. My dad was the one who first introduced me to baseball as a very young kid. I can still remember, one day when I was maybe five or six years old, when he gave me some coins and let me go into a store all by myself and buy some baseball cards. I felt so independent that day.
My dad also took me to my first big league games in St. Louis, and to minor league games that were closer to home. Is there anything better than going at the ballpark with your dad? If there was, I couldn’t think of what it might be.
As time went by, though, we stopped going to ballgames together. I moved away to go to college, and for a period of about 25 years–from about 1980 until this picture was taken in late 2005–going to a ballgame with my dad was an experience that went missing from my life. And I didn’t even think about it, really.
I was very grateful that we were able to reverse that some years ago. We’ve been to a few games together recently, he and I, and there isn’t much else that we would do together. But there isn’t anything else that I would want to do, either.
I’m not thrilled with how I look in the picture above, but I am thrilled that we had a chance to take it together. And the scoreboard even indicates that the Cubs won the game. But win or lose, it didn’t really matter on that day. Just being there with him was good enough for me.
