Like many people, I have spent the better part of my life fashioning a list of places I wanted to go and things I wanted to do. Because I am a typical American male, my list is mostly populated by sporting venues I want to visit and sporting events I want to witness. My “Bucket List” includes seeing a baseball game in each of the Major League Baseball parks, seeing a football game in each of the National Football League Stadiums, seeing a hockey game in each of the National Hockey League arenas and making a pilgrimage to the respective Halls of Fame of each of those sports leagues. (Because I could only jump 3 inches off the ground, my love of basketball lasted approximately 14 seconds.)
My passion for sports was instilled in me by my beloved father when I was a young boy of seven. That year, I attended my first baseball games with him at Shea and Yankee Stadiums. He took me to see Joe Namath lead the New York Jets play against Archie Manning and the New Orleans Saints. With him, I saw Eddie Feigner, the famed leader of a four man softball troop, the King and his Court, play at Eisenhower Park. And I played my first year of Little League Baseball for a team sponsored by Palermo Pizza of the Seaford Little League.
I was, I am now fairly certain, a horrible baseball player. I lacked the fundamental skills or any appreciable talent in the sport I most loved. But how I enjoyed playing. Every practice was another chance to throw, to hit, and to catch better. I thought about every game as though the future of the free world depended upon my ability to finally pull the talent from that well deep within my New York Met clad soul. With every earth shattering heartbreak, I was comforted by a most unlikely sports icon: my father.
My father was the son of two divorced first generation immigrants. My grandfather moved to Pittsburgh after the divorce and thus my father was essentially raised without dad. Even though he attended high school in New York during the 1950’s and the heyday of the Yankees of the Bronx, the Dodgers of Brooklyn and the Giants of New York, my father was a member of the “greasers” later immortalized by Danny Zucco, Arthur Fonzerilli and James Dean. As I later learned after reconnecting with some of his classmates from the class of 1959, my dad was a soft hearted and quiet spoken member of a crew that favored fast cars, leather jackets and hair grease (or as we call that very same product today “Dep”).
It was because of that personal back story that I appreciated my father’s willingness to volunteer as an assistant coach of my first little league team. This, despite working two full time jobs during the week and a third part time job on the weekends. My appreciation was not based on the significant time sacrifice rarely understood by seven year olds. Instead, I understood even at that early stage of my life, that my father was entering the unfamiliar territory of the baseball diamond to build an important bond that he did not share with his own father.
Taking me to the Bar Harbor Shopping Center in Massapequa to wait in the rain alongside hundreds of other fans to secure the autographs of Gerry Grote, Duffy Dyer and Nolan Ryan of the Miracle Mets may not have been his idea of a great time. But, he knew how monumental an evening it was to me. Going to a Car Show was clearly of greater interest to him that sitting in the outfield upper deck seats when the Mets played Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants on Sunday, June 13, 1971 with me, my best friend John and my dad’s cousin Bud. But, he knew that it was a day I would never forget. Taking me to watch the Jets practice at Hofstra University may have cost him a day of work. But, he knew it would heighten my ever growing love of football.
He somehow just knew.
That is why I loved my father. He was able to find a way to connect with me on my terms which were so unfamiliar to him. When my father died suddenly in 1995, I was devastated as I was just coming to appreciate the enormity of his special soul and the bridge he built between us.
As I planned my own path to fatherhood, I thought I knew things too. I just knew that my son was going to enjoy sports. I was going to be his tour guide as we traveled from sports venue to sports venue. I would provide him with the historic references that my dad was unable to conjure. I would expose him to the expansive history of baseball by buying him a yearbook or program from some other city we would visit to watch a team belonging to some other community. Sharing my “Bucket List” with my son would be a gift I knew both of us would relish.
Two years after my beautiful son was born, my family learned the devastating news that Edward (who was named after my father) suffered from autism. He was unable to readily make or maintain eye contact. He was unable to socially connect to others or to the world around him. His interests were limited to drawing images gleaned from favored television programs, riding his wagon or bicycle to parks where he could pick the branches of specific trees or swinging repeatedly and endlessly in a backyard playground.
For my first years of fatherhood, I grieved. I came to understand the many losses to be suffered by Edward, by his mother, and ultimately, by me. Sadness and anger were significant and at times, overwhelming. I sank into self-pity and anger as I tallied all of the lost hopes and prayers. The Bucket List that I had egotistically decided was to be mine and Edward’s would not be. I continued to travel to games in cities across the country through the years since. Alone or with companions, I suffered a quiet sadness. I knew my son could attend baseball games and perhaps even make it to the half way point of a game. However, he would not understand or appreciate the game I loved so dearly. My “Bucket” had a hole in it and my dreams of traveling to Wrigley Field, Fenway Park or Dodger Stadium with my boy leaked from it.
A few years ago I was in Chicago on a business trip. I had the good fortune to attend a Chicago Black Hawks hockey game and I decided to walk home from the arena. During the two mile walk home, in a moment of quiet clarity, a profound lesson from my beloved father dawned upon me. I realized that to build a strong bond with my beautiful son, I needed to set aside my “Bucket List” and start dedicating myself to crafting his “Bucket List.” Just like my father did almost forty years ago, I needed to figure out what desires and destinations were held deep within my beautiful son’s heart. Because my son suffers from autism, learning what his dreams are has never been easy. However, it could not be any harder than it was for a soft hearted “greaser” to develop a love of sports so much later in life.
Since my trip, I have focused on the joy of finding the perfect stick to pick, the ecstasy of hearing the song “Summer Breeze” play in my car for five consecutive morning commutes, and the pure happiness found in pulling my beautiful (and not “small”) son on a sleigh ride through the flat and (barely) snow covered roads of Melville. I have contemplated the coming spring with a new found enthusiasm for daily hellos to my neighbors’ goldfish pond and the coming summer with a deeper “appreciation” (toleration?) for the ice cold shower of a garden hose.
Should I ever feel frustrated by the tasks, I’ll simply think of Fonzie, Danny Zucco or James Dean bringing a seven year old to a baseball game.
* First published on the Institute of Education Sciences website.