Last night's Dodgers' victory, with Shohei Ohtani hitting three home runs and pitching a shutout into the seventh inning, was one for the ages. My Dad, now confined in a nursing home at 91, but still showing engagement, was high-fiving a lot with me in his room last night. My Dad has rooted for the Dodgers since 1939. At age five. He heard on the radio broadcast Mickey Owen drop the ball in Game 7 of the Yankees Dodgers 1941 World Series that led to the first of multiple Yankee wins over da Bums in World Series play. He heard Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s first major league game, and Bobby Thompson’s shot heard round the world and saw Jackie, Newcombe, Snider, Hodges, Furillo, and Campanella. By the way, he met most of them at one time or another. He stayed with the Dodgers when they left Brooklyn, even though he didn't know at the time, how Robert Moses and Mayor Robert Wagner were kicking O'Malley out. He has seen on tv and at stadiums Sandy Koufax, Drysdale, and, then, moving west with my Mom to join me, Fernando. And he has seen on tv Gibson’s homer against the favored Oakland As.
We watched together all of last year’s title run with his childhood favorite number 5 playing an uncanny powerful role in last year’s Dodgers' World Series title. From his nursing home he’s been in since June, we are doing the same in this year’s more improbable playoff run. We keep saying we can’t believe what we are seeing, but laughing and smiling together. Each night, I kiss his bald head and say, “See ya tomorrow, Dad.” And he says with an up voice, “Alright! Love ya!” I reply, “Love ya, too!”
As Terrence “Terry” Mann famously said, while standing on the first base sideline of an Iowa baseball field, “Baseball has marked the time.”
