Growing Up a Cubs Fan

When I was a kid, the summer could be a lonely time.

My family lived out on a rural route in Illinois, a house with a big yard next to a big lake. There weren't any kids for a couple of miles around, and when you don't have access to a car, they might as well have been in the next state.

So, I learned to entertain myself, and for the most part that would involve the mindless hum of a television set or the frenzied uselessness of video games. By the time I was twelve, I knew far more about Mario and Luigi than I did about the town I lived in, and it was around that time that my father took pity on me and brought me out into our wide yellow-green yard with a pair of baseball mitts (both left handed) and a couple of baseballs.

I still remember standing out there, impatient, the late afternoon sun beating my pasty white nerd body as I squinted to see my father standing with an old tattered Cubs hat across the lawn.

"You just watch the ball. No matter what else, you just keep your eye on the ball."

And then it was sailing across the grass, a speeding grounder that flew through my legs and up against some firewood behind me.

"That's alright. Go get it."

I started to walk towards the ball.

"C'mon, hustle. Run!"

When my dad tells you to run, you pick it up a little bit.

It seems like a trite idea, now, that a father and his son could bond over a couple of baseballs at the end of a hot Illinois summer, and at the time, it seemed to my nearsighted eyes like more of a pain than anything else. But we went out there nearly every afternoon for a couple of hours, my dad throwing the ball and teaching me the fundamentals while I rushed in for pop-ups, dove to the grass for the grounders, and crossed my arm for catches to my right side. Pretty soon, I was loving those afternoons. I never got good at baseball, but I learned the fundamentals(Mario never taught me those).