The Flog – The Fabry Log

I hate to be the human prayer list, but I heard last night from members of the family that my father is in the hospital with heart issues. He had a heart attack many years ago and has been going strong, but at 88, he's slowing down and we're all concerned. Please pray for him. If you don't hear me on the air you'll know I'm headed home.

On Wednesday's program, I talked about Bart Giamatti's essay on "The Green Fields of the Mind." It's just a beautifully written piece that hits at the heart. I'm not sure if that's where the following came from, but when I knew the World Series was winding down, I pulled out my own essay, part of my book, Dogwood.

This essay is actually a speech the main character gives in the chapel, to himself, because he can't attend the funeral. He's in prison when his father dies and the warden allows him this opportunity. This is not even a veiled attempt to hide my love for my father because most of it is about me. I'll include that section below if you want to read it.

My brother and sister in law were at the hospital and they don't have phones in intensive care, but they let me speak to him via cell. He had a hard time hearing me and thought I was my other brother. But guess what we talked about? He was watching the Phillies-Tampa Bay game. He was rooting for Tampa Bay, too.

Maybe your connection with your father was different--it could be bowling or fishing or any of a hundred things. Here's what I wrote:

“Talk to me of a father’s love and I will tell you of baseball. Tell me of a tender touch or a hug that lasts in your memory and I will kiss you with stories of our game. Walk with me in moonlight, tell me the ways your father expressed deep emotion, his innermost feelings, and I will tell you of pitchouts, squeeze bunts, and called third strikes.”

“The women of my life, my mother, my girlfriends, have never been able to touch the part of me that yearns for the fresh smell of baseball—the finely mowed infield. Deep brown dirt and snow white bases. The tough, pungent aroma of hickory and leather.

“In the cool of the evening, when his work was done, my father and I played catch to the voices of Al Michaels and Joe Nuxhall. We groaned together through the1971 season and rejoiced at the next and all the way to Oakland. I still hate Gene Tenace and Joe Rudi for taking that away from us, but it made the experience sweeter three years later when, in spite of Carlton Fisk, we beat the Red Sox in seven.

“It wasn’t the smell of my father’s pipe lingering in the air or the winning and losing. It was the game itself, spread out before us a hundred times and more each year, the same, yet changing. Baseball cast a spell that drew us together. Baseball was the closeness we shared. We were never able to express ourselves and enjoy each other fully, without reservation, except with baseball.

“As a child, I had no idea how my father felt about his work at the chemical plant where he worked. I still don’t know. I knew little about his childhood, the anguish of losing a mother and brother to the flu epidemic that spread through the country, the abuse of a stepmother, why he chose my mother as his wife, and a thousand other questions I should have asked.

“But I do know this. I know baseball. I know how he felt about the designated hitter, steroids, and the asterisk by Roger Maris’s name. Baseball became our connection, and each spring, when the sirens called, I felt the link grow even deeper and stronger.

“When I was a child, and we partook of the blessed sacrament of spring training results, my father and I would coax the sun a little hotter, a little higher and brighter in our West Virginia sky. We trembled beneath that vast, blue canvas, knowing it was the same sky that looked down on the green diamonds of the major leagues.

“In summer we sweated through each extra inning and blown save. We counted mosquitoes, jarred lightning bugs, and believed in our team. We were separated by years, tastes in music, food, clothes, and politics, but we delighted in baseball. We kept scorecards and statistics ready to recall the previous year’s Cy Young award winner, batting champ, or MVP.

“Fall came and we praised the God who created pennant races. We cursed the demon of the season-ending groundout or pop fly. Baseball was the glue that bound our lives and kept them coming back to each other. Baseball was each tender word never spoken. It was the pat on the back, the term of endearment whispered.

“The last morning we spent together, just before my sentencing, my father and I spoke the last words that passed between us. We talked about our walks in the woods—memories of walking sticks and an old dog, we talked about our town and the changes over the years, and we talked of baseball.”