Fatherhood & The Flat Brown Mitt

For my father, the ultimate teacher

When we were just boys we wondered if there was anything Dad did not know. After all, he knew why the sun went-into-the-dirt at night and how to make a radio from just one knob we found in the toy box. He even graduated top of his class at MIT, and that must have been good because people said ‘oooh ahh’, when we boys unknowingly boasted the fact.

While I am sure baseball was not his idea of a ‘favorite pastime’, he knew how to play that too. I discovered this when I asked him if he would teach this athletically-challenged boy how to be a better catcher.

Taking a break from puttering around the yard he said ‘absolutely’ with that patented optimistic lilt he always has in his voice.

Out to the freshly washed Pontiac we trod. I followed with my borrowed catcher’s glove, quilted-chest protector already in place and cast aluminum catcher’s mask sitting jauntily on top of my head like Carlton Fisk waiting for the next batter.

I have to admit at this point I was a bit perplexed. Where were we going? Didn’t he know we did not need to drive anywhere? We could just play catch in front yard. I would not throw the ball through the white-bay-window of the red house. I promise.

But we did not get in to the car, but rounded the long blue tail. Up popped the trunk.

I peered in.

Normally, the only time we boys were really conscious that there was a trunk was when we climbed in to whisk out dirt from a summer pilgrimage to the garden center or were asked to retrieve tools called Craftsman, Allen and Phillips.

But today we were here to learn baseball, I guess. And this confused me.

Dad reached into a small recess of the trunk that I did not know existed. I remember he looked a bit proud when his hand returned with a, well…at this point, I did not know. I had never seen anything like it — not even in pictures. He wiped the leathery object on his Saturday pants and wringing it like a beach towel as he turned his face to mine.

He could see my confusion but he knew that words could not explain. Stretching out his garden soiled right hand he slipped on the — to my surprise — baseball mitten. I say mitten because that was as the closest to anything I had ever seen. But this mitten was pan-flat and almost black with age. Shaped more like a wooden paddle than a glove and was just about as pliable.

‘When a leftie finds a mitt that works, he sticks with it.’

I was dumbfounded. How was he to catch with that? What good was that going to do? And to this day I wonder — what was it doing in the back of the Pontiac?

But with few other words, he motioned for my baseball, and I handed it to him. I guess I should have tossed it to him to kick-start the game but I was skeptical. Probably my third grader arrogance wanting him to get the feel of it first.

He took the ball in his strong left hand, palmed it once and hurled it 18 inches into his covered right hand. To my amazement, it stuck. A small indentation no deeper than a restaurant ashtray grabbed the ball in like a suction cup. Again the ball was hurled into the mitt. Same results.

I am sure my astonishment made Dad chuckle inside. He had to know what I was thinking. But he did not let on.

‘Ready?’

‘Yup.’

He knew how to play baseball, no doubt about it. While his wind-up was contracted, his release seemingly ill-timed, the speed and accuracy of his pitch was quite amazing. I have long since learned his awkward leftie style and small frame has always betrayed his real athleticism.

I know now at 40-something that the treasure he played with was from when he was a boy — a late-depression baseball mitt that any kid must have felt lucky to have. I also know now why he never throws anything away that still worked and has a purpose –because he lived through a time that you valued everything you had. This is something one does not learn until you are older, I guess.

I am not sure how long we played. Might have even been only an hour. But I learned a lot. How to crouch the plate without falling over. How to watch the way the pitcher throws the ball to judge the speed. And how Dad, a now many-faceted man, was once a boy like me.

There are probably hundreds of times that Dad taught us as boys — with the same pattern. We would ask wide-eyed because he knows everything, Get a bit skeptical about his methods or advice — only later to understand.

None of us boys really liked playing baseball. Best I can tell neither does Dad. I am pretty sure that day he was using engineering principles not experience to guide me. But that really wasn’t the point. I had something I wanted to know and Dad was willing to teach — even if he had no real interest in it.

Today, the lessons we boys can learn are not about baseball, or carburetors or even removing animals from attics. The stakes are higher now. Life is harder and decisions have greater consequences. But the pattern has been the same.

‘Dad can you help me?’ — ‘Absolutely.’

I will never forget that day playing catch. Like I will never forget the thousands of life lessons my Dad taught me.

I only hope as a father I can follow that pattern I have seen in action.

When I am asked ‘Dad can you help me?’

I will answer ’Absolutely’ with Dad’s patented optimism in my heart.