On Father’s Day, memories very much matter
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- June 17, 2023
- 742
Father’s Day is the Monkees of observed celebrations in that it’s perfectly acceptable, better than good, but ultimately too derivative.
It took until 1972 for the federal government to officially recognize its legitimacy, and like so much of what happened during the Nixon administration, some folks feel it’s better left unmentioned.
My dad experienced a yearly double whammy of semi-irrelevance in that his birthday was the third of June, placing it squarely in the shadow cast by Father’s Day, which meant he got a lot of slippers and ties in a two-week span before everyone else moved on and got started with the serious business of enjoying another summer.
But I don’t think that bothered him too much; in fact, I rather suspect he’d have been perfectly OK with ignoring Father’s Day entirely, and as far as his birthday went, it lost whatever appeal it might have once had when his mother died on that day in 1965.
He didn’t talk much about any of that to anyone else, with the exception of his wife, who kept his trust safe and well-tended.
I cannot even begin to fathom the depths of their love, and it pains me to this day to admit I was so often the cause of bitter disappointment and unnecessary discord in their relationship.
I only ever saw my father lose his temper once, and to my everlasting shame, it was in the immediate aftermath of my having hurled a gutter-snipe obscenity directly at my mother. This brought out an absolutely terrifying response from Dad, one that had his fists clenched in anger and his voice trembling with rage.
“You do not,” he said, staring intensely at me, daring me to utter a single word in self-defense, “talk to your mother like that … ever!”
Other than that, though, I think Dad and I got along just fine.
It was cool that evening at the ballpark on June 1 in 1987, just another Monday to most people, including those who had gathered to watch a Church League softball game, one that I was playing in.
I’d been playing for the parish team for about 10 years by then, and we’d become one of the favorites to win the championship every season. Don’t get me wrong: I was just a small cog in a much bigger machine, a guy who played good defense at first base while contributing the occasional extra-base hit, but by no means a star.
To be honest, I don’t remember exactly when Dad began attending our games so faithfully, but I know it certainly started after Mom died on New Year’s Day 1981, since she was never comfortable watching me play, dating back to my Little League days. I think she was afraid of seeing me either screw up or get hurt, so even when my team was playing for city titles, she stayed home.
That changed when I made it to Pony League but only because team moms were more or less required to get involved, so she volunteered to work in the concession stand, filling cups with pop and bags with popcorn, simply ignoring the games themselves.
Dad was different, though. To him, baseball — and eventually, fast pitch softball — mattered when his son was playing, and I was usually aware of where he was sitting, watching, always quietly, unless he was in conversation with his second wife, a social lady with many friends and acquaintances from all over our little town.
On that rather chilly Monday night, just a few days before his 71st birthday and about three weeks from Father’s Day, I had no idea what was about to happen nor, I’m quite certain, did Dad.
But that’s small-town life, right? You show up at the ballpark, lace up your spikes, get loose and prepare to do your best once again.
In all the years I’d been playing ball, dating back to the early ‘60s, I’d never hit a home run, not one that really counted. Oh, there was the time I knocked one over the centerfield fence during All-Star practice when I was 12, but I’ve always thought the pitcher was just grooving them, not really challenging the hitter.
Then there was the line drive I hit over the left-fielder’s head in a slow pitch game and I was able to round the bases while he looked frantically for it in a cornfield, but there was no fence to clear.
Which brings us to that Monday night in 1987 when I stepped into the batter’s box in the fifth inning to face an aging but crafty pitcher who specialized in throwing the knuckleball, a pitch that not even his catcher knew where it might go, so hitters were wary.
When something only happens once in your life, you tend to remember every detail, which is why I can still hear the satisfying sound of a well-struck ball, so solid I didn’t even feel it, and I can still see the left-fielder trying to scale the fence, looking like a mad spider in his ascent, glove hand reaching up, legs askew, all in vain.
As I rounded second base as fast as I could run, thinking I’d hit a triple, I caught sight of my teammates in the third-base dugout and could hear them laughing, clapping, amazed at what they’d just seen, and it was at that moment I understood what I’d done.
I’m 68 years old now, and my playing days are long over, though there’s still a voice whispering in my head that maybe, if I ever got the chance, I might still be able dig a throw out of the dirt or stretch a single into a double, though I know it’s not very likely.
So I content myself with remembering the smile on Dad’s face and the kind look in his eyes when he walked over that night after my only home run, not speaking at first, but saying all that mattered.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where stories about one’s glory days are always welcome to be shared and the beverages are always cold.