Dia de los padres

Happy Father's Day to Marty.

Many of us live a great distance from our Fathers. For me, the distance makes today an especially poignant day of reflection. We often overlook that which was ingrained in us by our fathers.

While I won't see my father today, I will remember the Father's days past when I was a kid. Most of those were spent on a baseball field either at Votee Park or the High School field. We would have breakfast and drive to the game together, discuss the lineups, talk about the Yankees and usually the Rangers and Knicks (at that time they were real franchaises). Once we arrived at the field it was all business, we hung up our jerseys, took BP and he turned into Coach. He was a great coach, the best I ever played for and I think many of my friends agreed. He never took the team too seriously, allowing Augie and Yousaf to call him "wings", a joking nickname that took a shot at his flowing side burns. He was also secure enough to take advice from his co-coach Bob Fischer and from his players. Its often not easy when your dad is the coach but that was never the case for me. I enjoyed the opportunity to spend time together doing something we both loved.

We won a lot of games those summers but the the off-field times at Pizza Hut and other post game dinners stick out in my head. I was reminded of my father's impact when I saw George DeCruise at a wedding a few weeks ago. He came up to me, first told me I looked just like my father (sorry for you dad) then wanted to talk about the team and all the fun we had, ironically he left out the time he ran through the temporary fence in right field in Fair Lawn. Yeah, we may have gotten into a fracas or two with Fair Lawn and yeah somehow we lost a championship game to a Ridgewood team who we had beaten 3 times earlier in the season, Ed Note: oddly enough in the Championship game the team showed up ine mismatched uniforms and were shaving in the dugout. but what truly mattered was spending time together.

Dad, I want to thank you for all that words simply aren't enough to describe. Until I became a real, responsible adult I never fully appreciated the amount of sacrifice, work and energy you put into my childhood. Whether it was going into work at the crack of dawn to make sure you could leave on time to make a 4:30 soccer game or it was driving 90 min each way to a Rutgers game just for the 10 minutes of time we had to talk before the game started. I will always cherish those talks. Thank you for setting positive examples. Thank you for teaching me how to grind and work and that the most important part most times is just showing up. You taught me responsibility, and always instill in me the confidence that I can achieve my dreams.

I miss you and I love you.

Happy Father's Day.