The ultimate parenting W

Barring trauma, most of us have ready access to precious few childhood memories. Occasionally, a client will share with me some random event that took place when they were five or six or seven. We take a crack at memory analysis, but often come up empty, concluding that this particular memory, for some reason, just simply stuck.

In my own childhood, I was fortunate enough to experience precious little trauma. But random memories rear their nagging heads here and there. Some in particular show up time and again, sometimes in that twilight between awake and asleep, sometimes annoyingly in the middle of a session.

So, a quick story of one of those moments from my childhood. I was nine or 10 years old the time, my brother Tom 2 1/2 years younger. In a show of unusual ceremony, my dad announced that we were going to a baseball game. My dad hated sports. We knew absolutely nothing about baseball.

But, ok Dad.

Still groggy from sleep, we tossed our tiny mitts into the backseat of the Chevy, filled some sandwich bags with Cheerios, and headed to Wrigley Field. For a baseball game. Again, I don’t remember ever seeing baseball on TV in our house except maybe in passing. We never talked baseball. There was no little league. No quick game of catch before dinner.

Never once.

In any event, I remember realizing that I’d never seen my dad quite so agitated as he was that day. I recall bumper-to-bumper traffic, crowded walkways, cramped seating. He was not one for any of this. In the stands, my dad’s annoyance was palpable. I have a visceral memory of his displeasure. I wasn’t sure why we were even there, nor was Tom. After 3 painful innings or so, we headed out of the stadium and back to the car. We arrived at the familiarity of our neighborhood pool, my dad’s sweet spot, before the opening whistle.

That was a weird blip of a day, one of those funky memories that sticks.

Years later, on one of our annual road trips to Florida, I asked my dad about the day. Turns out, my mom pressed him to take us to the game all those years ago, citing a paternal bucket list of sorts: Fathers take sons to baseball games, so you have to. And he verified that my memory was accurate. He hated it.

I couldn’t tell you who the Cubs played that day. It didn’t matter. It set the tone for how I would look at sports, baseball in particular, for the foreseeable future. Modeled disinterest.

Several years later, in high school, my two closest friends were Mike and Andy. Andy favored baseball, a lot. He was a hard-core White Sox fan, a paper and pencil, pitch-by-pitch scorekeeper, cap, jersey, the whole thing.

I can say with all sincerity that, though the three of us attended dozens of games over the course of a few years, I paid attention to zero pitches, players, innings, standings, none of it. I couldn’t read balls and strikes. If you asked me at any moment, I wouldn’t know the score, the inning, maybe not even the opponent. Honestly.

I was out of baseball for decades after that.

Fast forward quite some time. When my son George was a kid, I couldn’t say precisely when, where or how, he started getting into the game. And just like that, we were watching baseball on TV, a lot. We started taking George to Cubs games regularly. And man, he soaked it up. In very short order, he knew the names of position players, lineups, bullpens. He graduated quickly to reading pitches, predicting plays and steals and strategy.

Because George was so very into baseball, both Julie and I became fanatics alongside him. I think this is among the coolest parts of parenting that we too often miss because we think we need to attach some agenda to our kids’ futures. We forget that the joy of the arrangement doesn’t just lie in teaching our kids, but by learning from them as well. To this day, I marvel at George’s savant-like baseball wisdom. The diamond is second nature to him, instinctual in a way that brings me such joy.

And listen, if you follow your kids’ passions, you really do never know where it’ll lead you. Throughout his childhood, we attended countless ballgames in a lot of parks. Much of our travel planning was dictated by cities with away games for the Cubs. Endless memories, all good. Ballparks quickly became among my favorite places.

Now all the while, our Cubs were also a notoriously middling team: poor hitting, sloppy pitching, sleepy bullpen, error-rich defense, and rapidly turned-over management. We weren’t there for wins, but we’d take them when they showed up. We were there for the entire baseball experience: the stadium, the food, the camaraderie, and yeah, even the game itself.

Duffy’s into baseball. Who would have thunk?

Early on in George’s baseball fandom, my plan was to catch a game in every major league ballpark. So far, we’re only about halfway there. We’ll see.

But if you follow your kids’ interests, you never know where they’ll take you, truly. As you are likely aware, the fate of our Cubs changed about a decade ago.

When George was in college, the Cubs acquired a few scrappy hitters, some strikingly good fielders. Things were, shockingly, really gelling on Chicago’s north side. Not a fluke, but a genuinely good team with some really fun characters on the field. It was a rather astonishing joy to see George’s team, now our collective team, actually winning.

The summer before his sophomore year, George Duffy, ever the optimist, predicted a World Series victory.

Ha!

Like the Cubs were not going to slump in early August like some other disturbingly promising seasons. Like they’re not a choke team. The Cubs don’t win. But I dug the kid’s spirit.

And as it turned out, the team made it to the playoffs. I drove down to Indiana University to pick George up for a home game in Chicago. Big win. Then the NL championship series. I picked George up for a second straight weekend. The Cubs were playing the Dodgers and doing well, but the LA ace was slated to be on the mound. And even warming up, he was looking good. It felt like we had experienced a solid run, but luck was likely to run out with this series.

But that night, in the wake of a gorgeous ninth inning double play, the Cubs clinched the National League title for the first time in more than 70 years. They were bound for the World Series. This was one of the most stunning, joyful nights of my life. An older guy was standing next to me in the bleachers. He asked, “Is that your boy?”

“Yeah, George.”

“Does he, uh, does he know?”

“Yes. Yes, he knows.”

George, Julie and I celebrated wildly that night. Something that felt improbable, even impossible, just happened. And we were there for it. Together.

You likely know the rest. I made a final trip to Bloomington to pick George up the following week, and we all attended a World Series game. Amazing moment for the Duffy’s, and amazing that this group of Duffy’s really cared.

The Cubs lost that game. But after 108 years, they won the series. It was a moment, I gotta say.

I sometimes think about what the younger me would have thought of 2016, baseball-obsessed me. Probably would have thought it wasn’t possibly real.

But I’m grateful beyond words for the role baseball has played in my adult life, what it’s done for my family, how it’s connected me even more with George.

Now, I’ll admit that this is a very fortunate story. Maybe your kids’ interest won’t lead to something so life-altering as the World Series. But you never know, maybe it will. And even if it’s an ordinary curiosity on the screen, or in the pool, or on the stage or on the field, it may drive an extraordinary enough connection to change your child’s life for the better. And in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

I believe that, if the Cubs had continued to just be the “Cubs”, a predictably choke team for another century, if 2016 never happened the way it did, baseball would still have been an important part of our relationship. Just moments ago, I sent George an Instagram reel of a young Cub upstart named Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA for those in the know) swan-diving for an uncatchable ball in the outfield. Which he caught. He wrote me back to let me know that PCA had also hit two home runs that day.

We haven’t communicated about anything else all day, but I feel connected to him, and close to him. I feel like if he needs me or I need him, we are there for each other just a little bit more because of that exchange.

So if your kid takes to something that you don’t dig, just like I couldn’t stand baseball back in the day, I urge you, implore you, to get into it. Your lack of interest is not interesting. And it’s not about whether you like it or not. It’s about caring enough about what they care about. It’s not just acknowledging that they might be different from you. It’s recognizing that there’s something to learn from them, their perspective, their point of view. It’s how they figure out who they are, and a component of how they develop self-love and self-respect and confidence and command of their world.

It’s also a freaking blast. Don’t deprive your kids, or yourself, of this truly precious gift. Please don’t miss it.