Saturday, August 13, 2016

Celebration


Dear readers, I wrote this for the Oakland Tribune in August, 1991, 25 years ago this month.
*****
You are 9 years old and it is August, and you understand nothing about dog days and stretch drives and pennant fever. You only know that come Sunday, for the first time in your life, you will see baseball played in three dimensions, not behind a flat, black-and-white screen.
You ride shotgun in your father's '59 Chevy Bel Air, the one with the tail fins that look like Catwoman's eyes. The tickets sit in an envelope that won't leave your hands. Stuck there. As the signs for the ballpark appear, you crane your neck every which way to steal your first glance of a major-league baseball stadium
Your dad makes the final turn and it appears before your eyes in one bold stroke. Your brain can't process the image fast enough. They showed you pictures of the Taj Mahal in the third grade, but the Indian palace is nothing more than a Lego project compared to the ballpark, its perfectly rounded frame, the flags stationed beyond center field, the thousands of cars that surround it like moths around a porch light.
Once inside your senses are simply overpowered by grass as green as green should be, a diamond as perfect as anything your mother has shown you through a jewelry-store window, the smell of hotdogs being grilled, vendors tossing double bags of roasted peanuts to patrons 20 years away and the patrons chucking quarters back, the fat lady next to you scratching her pencil across a scorebook you don't understand while taking up both armrests, your first view of a real fly ball and how it seems to hang in the air eternally, the sound of 30,000 people cheering as one.
Your dad is sitting next to you. Your team loses 3-2, but it's hard to be disappointed. It's a day you'll never forget, your first major-league baseball game.
You celebrate August.
*****
You are 14 years old and you do understand dog days and stretch drives and pennant fever. You are at the stadium with your dad, this time chauffeured in a 1970 Impala . . . no tail fins, just a lot of car. The stadium looks smaller but the hot dogs smell s juicy as ever. You think less about your father next to you and more about your little sister at home, and revel in the knowledge that you're here and she's not.
The final score means more because you know your team is fighting for a pennant. A win, and you feel good on the ride home; a loss, and you sulk. Later in the evening you and your father argue about whether you can have money for this or permission to do that, and you go to bed angry.
You are 23 years old and you love 400 miles from home. Baseball is more than a pastime, it's an obsession. You visit a different ballpark than the one from your youth and you go with friends. You use your own money and your own car. The stadium is just a building, the hot dogs just an expense. You don't think much about your father; you hardly talk to him. Your new team stinks, but you go every week because it is late summer and it is where you should be.
You celebrate August and you celebrate the game, because it is bigger than you or your father or your friends or your team.
*****
You are 28 years old and you write about baseball for a living. You still live 400 miles from your youth, but you talk to your dad more. Old bad feelings are wisely forgotten as youth matures into adulthood. It is November and you are back home, and you use your connections to score two 50-yard-line seats to the NFL team that you watched with your father when the leaves turneded brown. Because of your job, you can't spend August afternoons together anymore.
You pull into the stadium in your car, a little Honda, two of which could have fit into your dad's Impala. You sit and watch the game, and the enjoyment on his face as he watched the game, knowing full well his spark is not drawn from the field, but from you, and the fact that your are there.
You are 31 years old and it is August. You are sitting in the baseball press box covering a game and the phone rungs. It's your father, from 400 miles away, and he's watching the game on cable. He wants to know about a certain play, why the umpire ruled the way he did. He wants to know why his favorite team, the one you watched together in days gone by, has started to stumble.
You are struck by a warm feeling that things are good, even if you are not close. You look out your press box window and see fathers and sons.
You see the game unfold before them, and you celebrate August.
*****

Postscript: The father and the son had 40 more years together after that first ballgame before the father passed away, beloved, after a long and interesting life.

Ella, Henry and Ben Schulman, 2008. Two months later, Ben left us.

22 comments:

  1. Great read, Hank. Thanks for sharing it with us.

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  2. I just loved it, brought happy tears to my eyes.

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  3. Mr. Schulman, wonderful and timeless article. Many thanks for sharing!
    Clay Cooke
    Salem Oregon

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  4. Mr. Schulman, wonderful and timeless article. Many thanks for sharing!
    Clay Cooke
    Salem Oregon

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  5. I am a Scottish newcomer to baseball, but I get it...

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  7. Your article is full of the settings, the visuals incredible. I went along on your journey full of wood, leather and rawhide, like an old western. Not to be missed -- the family love and angst. Enjoyed this a lot!

    I grew up from age 3 as a baseball brat, and after being drafted by baseball and basketball, Dad chose his first love. I get this, but from another and different perspective. The eldest child of an MLB pitcher, then coach and manager, I have long cheered on and cussed at this game. What a great life, though a trying one, with your adored Dad gone 9 months of each year. We are all still tied to it in an explicable yet not explicable way. The wonders of baseball -- it gives and it takes away. I am my Father's daughter. I love this crazy game so. #hummbaby

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  8. Sherri, thank you for writing. Roger Craig was the first manager I was fortunate to cover. A gentleman of the first order and still the only manager ever to apologize for snapping at me. Nobody thinks about the people back home when a ballplayer or team executive or a writer is gone for so long living his or her dream. I saw Roger a couple of months ago at a reunion. He chided me for a mistake I had in the paper that morning. He was right, too. :-)


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    1. I will pass on your kind words to Dad. His memory is impeccable, even at 86. Especially when it concerns baseball. Definitely learned his manners from his southern parents. :) We are all very close to baseball, even today. Dad is still in touch and involved with all the CA teams he was with, plus the Tigers. Also now, some of his players are coaches and managers. That's fun to see.

      It is a different life, when fans feel you owe them because they pay to see you play, manage, coach. What you owe them is the best effort every day, and respect. That's a two-way street I didn't always see happening. Sitting in the stands as a young girl, some fan screaming over my head about my Dad's pitching that particular day, well, I learned a lot about grace, respect, gritting my teeth and being a lady.

      So yes, respect is a big thing for us. Today, I love talking baseball on any kind of forum or in person with fans I see in their ball caps out somewhere. What saddens me now, with so many ways to connect, there are those that feel they must rant about something they neither understand nor have love and respect for. They cuss and bad mouth managers, front office, sports writers, coaches and players. Their advice makes it all look so terribly easy to manage a team, break out of a slump or find their command again. And they ruin it for the true baseball fans who just want to gather and discuss the game we love. I find I spend more time deleting bad posts I don't want kids to see, than getting to enjoy the camaraderie that is trying to happen online. I wish that wasn't so. So many have so much that's worth hearing, yet it's hard to get around those just there to ruin the fun.

      Keep doing what you're doing. We really enjoy reading what you write -- your knowledge and experiences, your opinions, all valued by those who know this beloved game of baseball!

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    2. Well said, fire Bobby, trade everybody SMH

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  9. You bring tears to my eyes, so beautiful. I can only hope my son will love the game as much as I do when he turns 15.

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  10. Thank you, Julio. I am sure you son will take your love and pass it on down to his children, your grandchildren, some day as well. Your children learn from you, and that's the best teacher in the world. Enjoy the game! I'm ready for another nail biter tonight with those Giants and Dodgers. ACK! Why do I love the torture of Giants baseball so? Hehehe.

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    1. Been asking myself that question for years. Started following the Giants as a 17 year old kid, having been born in San Francisco I moved a lot between SF and Guatemala finally settled in August 1986 just in time for the #hummbaby era to flourish. Good times

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  11. Such good times!! We will never forget the memories.

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