tom stanton - prize-winning baseball author - The Final Season

tom stanton - prize-winning baseball author - The Final Season

So, I just finished this book, which I'd bought years ago. I had never got around to reading it; it was a staple of the "futures shelf," where I put the couple dozen or so books I've bought but not yet read. I'm stupid like that; my eyes are bigger than the time I have to satisfy my appetite.

But I pulled this down and read it, I thought, because I'd just seen the Tigers play in Philly. And I wanted to remember what it was like when they weren't a good team - the book's set in 1999, pre-Juan Gonzalez, when they finished about 30 games out of first.

It's about a journalist who attends every gave of the 1999 season, the Tigers' last in Tiger Stadium. He thinks he's writing a book about the closing of a great old stadium, and his feelings of anger about that. Later, he realizes that his anger and frustration are about the fading of his memories and of his father's mortality. The closing of Tiger stadium places the author just a bit farther from his memories.

It's a fairly brilliant book, even if it doesn't have much of a continuous narrative. Actually, it reads, interestingly enough, like a bunch of blog posts.

But I realized today, as I read it on the train, that I picked it up off the futures shelf around father's day. This is the second father's day I've spent out here, away from my father, but the first where I was away indefinitely.

My brother was with me on father's day; Pat was in town to see the Tigers play the Phillies. I don't see him enough, that's for sure, and he traveled 8 hours by car to see the same baseball team that plays a half hour from his house. (And to be an opposing team's fan at a Philadelphia sporting event, which I think qualifies his vacation as "adventure travel"). But it was the game that got him out here.

Pat called me yesterday from my parents' house in Michigan, where they were finally getting around to opening dad's father's day gifts. Mom called me later to tell me that Dad really liked his present; today when we talked on the phone Dad asked me where I'd found it.

I like the kind of presents that show some sort of bond, or recognition; presents that show not only how much we care about the recipient but what we know about them. Presents that we think they'll enjoy because we know them well enough to know what sorts of memories, interests or inside jokes make them happy. Presents that make them feel like they're special to us.

I gave my dad a scale replica of Olympia Stadium, where the Red Wings used to play and where he used to see hockey when he was younger than I am now.

I stayed up late tonight, finishing Standon's book, knowing now why I was really reading it.