Today is my first Father's Day as a dad, and I just fed my three-month old son four ounces of milk. He is now in his crib sleeping peacefully in his cute little New York Jets jersey. It finally fits! I actually bought it for him when he was still about two weeks old in his mommy's belly. These days he's quickly outgrowing his newborn clothes, so I made sure he got to wear this one and take some pictures in it.
Last week we bought him three New York Mets onesies, but they're still a little big for him even though they were the smallest size we could find. Hopefully, by the time they fit late this summer, the Mets will be playing in some meaningful games.
I was never a baseball fan growing up. I did go for Little League once in the Philippines. There was this white American guy teaching us how to stand in the box and hold the bat and stuff. I remember he kept insisting we just talk to him in our own dialect - which he understood but didn't speak - instead of our awkward sounding English.
It went okay, I guess. And I don't know what happened, but I just never went back for some reason. Weeks later in school, my friends were deciding who should play what position in the field. They were saying, "Ryan* should play first base, Robert* should play second, and Sunny* should play shortstop." And I just remember thinking, "What's a shortstop?" I never asked them, though.
I don't remember if they included me in there. I think they did. I remember them asking me to be at the field on Saturday. I never did show up. I was too busy riding my bike, I think. I simply forgot. It must have had something to do with my mom not being around, because she would have been on top of it. But at that time she had already left to work in the States.
As for my dad? Well, I'm not too fond of the guy. I'm not too sure how I feel about him exactly. When I was a little boy, I used to actually pray that he would die. That's bad, yeah? But I'm not sure if I really had enough reason to feel that way or if I was overreacting. I'm not too sure. I'm still thinking about it.
Not that we didn't have some good times. But they were few and far between. Or they would start out to be happy but turn out otherwise.
Once when I was nine, my mom sent us some baseballs and gloves, and my dad, my two older brothers and I went outside to play catch. I've never played catch before in my life, and I definitely wasn't used to wearing a mitt or catching with my left hand. (If you're right-handed, you have to catch with your glove on your left hand so you can throw with the right one.)
So my brother throws the ball to me, and it goes past my glove and straight to my sternum. I couldn't breathe. And instead of teaching me how to catch the damn thing properly, my dad and my brothers laughed. And so I was never that crazy about baseball from that day.
Three years later, and I finally went to live with my mom in Queens, New York. This was in 1991. We were living in a nice house with my aunt, uncle and little cousin. My uncle was Irish. A white guy. And I never understood what he found so interesting with baseball that he would sit on the couch for hours and watch the Yankees lose.
My uncle and I were never close. I'm not too sure of why that is. I think I was just too different for him. He offered me chocolate pudding one time, and I refused to try it. He gave me this odd "Are you insane?" look. He seemed to think it was the greatest thing in the world, and he was excited for me to try it. It just looked too damn squishy for me, okay? Sorry, but I'm not interested. So yeah, I think that disappointed him. I was definitely not a typical American kid.
We moved out after a couple of months, and my mom and I lived in a small apartment in New Jersey. It was there in 1995 when, having nothing else to watch, I tuned in to a baseball playoff game. It was actually pretty exciting. I watched Buck Showalter's Yankees lose to Tino Martinez and the Seattle Mariners.
The next year, I watched the same Tino Martinez win the World Series with the Yankees. And on my birthday, too! I started watching more baseball since then.
I never paid attention to the Mets, though. The Yankees would go on to have the most wins ever in a single season, as well as another championship in 1998, and the Mets were just that other team in the city.
Until Mike Piazza arrived. He was traded to the Mets in 1998, and they were gonna be a good team now, and I wanted them to be a good team, too. So I followed along from time to time and rooted for them.
In 2000, the Mets made it to the World Series, and they played against the Yankees. I actually found myself rooting for the Mets. I figured the Yankees already had three rings out of the last four. The Mets lost, of course, and they haven't been that successful since then.
But I'm still a Mets fan, and I hope I can bring my son to CitiField soon. And someday, I hope to coach him in Little League and teach him the fundamentals. For now I'll just watch the games on TV with the volume low so the noise doesn't wake him.
No comments:
Post a Comment