02/03/2026
This last year with my dad has been living in my heart a lot lately.
About two years before he passed, I bought him this baseball book. Joe Posnanski’s list of the top 100 players of all time. Total dad gift. The kind of book you give someone who doesn’t just watch baseball …they remember baseball. The players, the eras, the stories.
A lot of those names were the guys he grew up with. His heroes.
Every time I’d ask if he started reading it, he’d grin and blame his glasses.
“Ahhh, I gotta get new ones.”
Or some other excuse.
Classic dad move.
So one Sunday, when I picked him up to come hang at my place, I grabbed the book and said, “Forget it. I’ll read it to you.”
And that kind of became our thing.
Every Sunday, I’d read him a chapter. One player at a time.
Johnny Bench.
Willie Mays.
Bob Gibson.
He’d smile that little half-smile and then the stories would start pouring out. Not stats …memories.
Where he was when he watched that game.
Who he was with.
How dominant Gibson felt.
How nobody, but nobody played like Willie Mays.
Sometimes he’d interrupt me mid-sentence just to say, “Man… that guy was something.”
Those afternoons weren’t really about the book.
They were about him getting to be a kid again for a while.
And me getting to sit there and watch it happen.
We never finished it.
After he passed, the book just sat there. On the shelf. Almost staring at me. I couldn’t touch it for the longest time.
It felt unfinished. Like a conversation that got cut off.
This year, I made a quiet New Year’s resolution: one chapter a day.
So every morning, coffee in hand, I read a story.
And somehow… it feels like I’m still reading to my dad.
Like he’s still sitting across from me, smiling, ready to jump in with “Oh man, let me tell you about this guy…”
It’s funny how something so small, a book about baseball, can turn into a time machine.
Some days it makes me laugh.
Some days it hits me right in the chest.
But mostly, it just makes me grateful.
Grateful I got those Sundays.
Grateful for those stories.
Grateful that baseball gave us one more way to connect.
I guess we’re still finishing the book together.
One chapter at a time.
