The New York Times asked for photos symbolic of someone who died in the past year for its project, “What Loss Looks Like”. We submitted a photo of my father’s baseball mitt. When we found it it still had a baseball in the palm and the rubber bands round it. Dad would have loved to know that the NYT chose it for both its print and online editions. The online link is below.
Baseball brought my father a lot of joy at every stage of his life. He played in college and coached little league with his sons, Joe and Ed. Until his last years, he bought gloves at garage sales, rejuvenated them, and gave them away. In fact, in 2021, he brought a glove to Jennifer, his granddaughter, in New Jersey. She doesn’t play baseball. Maybe it had a different meaning.
In the play, Dear Evan Hanson, a father sings to his troubled son’s friend about what you have to do to break in a glove. He sings that there are no short cuts and, like anything, you have to do it right, “and that’s the right way to break in a glove.” Of course my dad disagreed with the method in the song, he had his own recipe. But the meaning remains. He was a great dad and he would have LOVED knowing that he made The New York Times.
KPAL Family Site 