Mondays with Mike: Fathers and sons and daughters

I’ve always thought “Field of Dreams” was kind of a bad movie with some irresistible features.

Bad because, well, a lot of the story arc just kinda doesn’t make sense. And because a lot of the dialog is clunky, overwrought, soap opera stuff.

Irresistible because when it came out we still lived in Urbana, Illinois and cornfields were as enmeshed in our lives as skyscrapers are today. And yes, because every time Kevin Costner asks  his reanimated father if he wants to have a catch, I cry. I think of my father and I can see his ridiculous baseball glove, a deep mahogany piece of leather that really looked like a glove—virtually no padding. He’d had that thing since he grew up in coal country in southwest Pennsylvania, about 40 miles from Pittsburgh.

So, in advance, I wasn’t sure how I felt about last week’s Field of Dreams baseball game between my White Sox and the Yankees. It had the makings of a, pardon the pun, corn fest. As in corny, schmaltzy, and overwrought like the movie itself. It was played not in the actual Field of Dreams from the movie, but a temporary stadium adjacent to the movie field. A lot could go wrong.

I wasn’t able to see the first half of the game—I had a work function to attend. But I got home in time for the last few innings. And I was completely enrapt. Somehow the whole damn thing worked, including the game itself.  And at the end, when White sox shortstop Tim Anderson hit an opposite field walk-off home run, I cried, just like when I watch the movie itself.

Yesterday, my nephew Aaron and his son Kieran drove up from Champaign, Illinois and joined Beth and me at Sox park to see the White Sox and Yankees play the third game of the Field of Dreams series. It was a beautiful day, hot in the sun, cool in the shade, breezy. The park was packed.

For several of his formative years, Aaron lived with my mom and dad. My sister was a single mom and at some point, living with our folks was the best way to build some stability. My sister was able to finish college at night school, and the two of them kept the same address for longer than they had previously been able to.

My sister died the day after her 60^th birthday—breast cancer. I lost my only witness to our upbringing—but because Aaron lived with my mom and dad, he and I have a certain kind of bond. We can joke about his grandparents’ many quirks.

Aaron’s son Kieran turned 19 on the day of the Field of Dreams game. He celebrated his birthday by watching the game with his two little sisters and Aaron. For those of you who didn’t see the game: the White Sox blew a three-run lead in the top of the ninth inning before Anderson’s heroics saved the day. Losing that lead left Aaron’s two daughters, who are not big baseball fans, crying, and wondering out loud why anyone watches baseball. The home run left them all hoarse from cheering.

And then they stayed up and streamed the movie.

P.S. The first walk-off homer by the White Sox against the Yankees was by … Shoeless Joe Jackson, in 1919.