Nine days ago, I sat in the front row of a crowded church and realized the meaning of baseball.
It’s not just the never-ending hope for a championship team. It’s not our angst over how many players it took to trade for an opening-day starter. It’s also not the importance of a first-pitch strike or a four-question allowance from Erik Bedard.
There are people in this world who need baseball badly, and they’re not the ones making millions of dollars to pitch every five days.
Baseball can be the 7 o’clock salve to the more serious issues people deal with every day. It a three-hour release nearly every night for six months that helps get people through burdens that most of us can’t imagine.
Walk through a hospital in the evening in the spring, summer and fall and listen. Chances are good you’ll hear the sounds of a baseball game on more than one TV.
Visit a nursing home and see how many residents proudly wear their favorite teams’ shirts, hats and jackets. Then say something about their team and notice how often their lost look changes to a smile.
Nine days ago, I sat in the front row of a crowded church in Rolla, Mo., and thought how the past five, six, seven years have changed my perception of baseball.
My brother and I sat on either side of our mother, with family and friends surrounding us. In a casket before us lay our father, husband, grandfather, coach, teacher, inspiration and best friend.
He’s the one who played Whiffle Ball games with us in the backyard every night after supper. He built the pitcher’s mound alongside the house and caught us every day. He coached our baseball teams, as fathers often do, but not just for the benefit of his own two kids. He also coached American Legion teams, and he led the effort to start a new league that allowed, among other things, kids as young as 5 years old to play baseball in our town.
He never met a kid he didn’t adore. That’s why he worked 30 years as a coach and school administrator, then opened a toy store and operated it for 21 more years. I think he gave away as many toys as he sold, and that thrilled him.
One day, Mom noticed he had trouble keeping his books straight. Then she learned he’d been asking customers help him figure out their bills.
Tests revealed a heartbreaking diagnosis: the early stages of Alzheimer’s. It’s a death sentence, but I refused to believe it. His mind was sharp, his body strong, his wit as quick as ever.
But as time went by, the decline was slow, obvious and horribly sad. Mom became his 24-7 caregiver. She took him everywhere, including spring training in Arizona, where he loved wearing his Mariners cap and jacket.
Seven months ago, he suffered a seizure and spent a week in the hospital, and it became clear there was no choice but to admit him to a nursing home.
It’s a place with little hope, and during my visits I realized what baseball can bring these people. When the Cardinals’ games came on TV, it helped the patients and their families bridge one difficult day with the next.
Dad’s roommate, Adolph, has outlived everyone else in his family and he had little left but his passion for the Cardinals.
My wife had bought a Cardinals cap for me to give Dad the next time I would see him, in May. Instead, we brought it to the funeral and asked Mom to give it to Adolph. He hasn’t taken it off.
Baseball always gave me and Dad something to talk about, even in his final months when he couldn’t remember the players’ names anymore.
Nine days ago, Walter Milton Arnold was buried in a quiet cemetery in central Missouri. As I walked away from the graveside service, I looked down to see a headstone nearby. It belonged to a 3-year-old.
How appropriate.
No doubt, he had introduced himself and they already were talking baseball.
What a beautiful game.
What a beautiful guy.
Read Herald baseball writer Kirby Arnold’s blog at www.heraldnet.com.
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