Baseball and Friendship

Yesterday I took my Sunday off! That’s two weeks in a row! Now did I rest? Kind of, in life you meet many people, different people all kinds of people. I made a friend when I was seven years old that without ever saying much to each other we became instant lifelong friends. As you grow up and grow away from your childhood and life moves you around the country and even around the world, true friendships withstand any distance put between two people who share a common bond.

We started out as kids playing the game baseball and developing the love of a game we shared. Playing night and day on a field, street or backyard with whatever was available, rubber ball, wiffleball or dice and strat-o-matic cards it was learning the game, the fundamentals and the history.  We pretended to be our favorite players playing on our favorite teams, he the Yankees and me the Reds from that 1976 World Series. We were separated after high school as he went into the Army and headed off to Germany and I to play ball in college. We both returned home and resumed our friendship as if we went on a weekend vacation before he moved on to Texas and I left for Florida. Phone calls spread out over the years kept us up to date on each other and flights to each other’s new homes to appear as the best man at each other’s weddings kept us in the family albums. The memories of these times come up over and over again in our conversations some forty years later and we are young again. We laugh and then we look at our grown kids and come back to reality.

This weekend my best friend met for the first time my 9 year old son and I met his 16 year old daughter for only the second time. We spent a day at Disney trying to cram three parks into a twelve hour visit and even though the time flew by and we hardly had much time to speak with each other we had the peace of mind of being with each other for a few hours and “all was good”. Rushing from park to park (something I hate to do) was fun on this day and I was energized and tireless. I kind of got a workout in as we walked too many miles to count and then for all intense and purposes I did a quarter mile sprint with my son sitting on my shoulders (he was too tired to walk)  as we raced out of the last park trying to avoid some of the traffic.

It was a great day and I hope we can do it again sooner rather than later.

As I mentioned my friend Joe is a Yankee fan, as are most of my friends since I grew up in the New York/New Jersey area and he would have enjoyed seeing Lou Gehrig on here with his name but I already posted that part of my list and the Iron Horse will be the only Yankee that makes my list of favorites by position so, I will post the oldest member of my list here. The greatest Right Handed Starting Pitcher in my opinion is Walter Johnson.  Two things; 417 wins on a historically poor team and when a batter says to the umpire “that sounded high” you have got to think that Walter Johnson stands way above the rest of the Right Handed Starting Pitchers in the history of the game. 

Oh by the way how about this for a great battery, Joe was born on Tom Seaver's Birthday and I was born on Johnny Bench's Birthday! No wonder we worked together so well!