Playing Catch Until There’s No More Catch to Be Had

[Greggory Masterson]

Image courtesy of Reese Strickland-Imagn Images

I suppose I didn’t have a choice but to be a baseball fan. It’s in my blood, to some degree. My great-uncle died of head trauma, after years of wearing beanballs as a barnstormer in the 30s and 40s. He and my grandfather had the chance to play against Satchel Paige and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe when they played for the Bismarck Club (sometimes known as the Churchills) in 1935. Apparently, Grandpa got a hit, but I’m skeptical.

But Grandpa passed down his love of baseball to his son, and his son passed it down to me. Really, baseball is something you inherit from someone, whether it’s your parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle, or even your persistent friend who begs you to come out to the ballyard some Sunday afternoon; I myself made a baseball fan out of a nerdish grad school classmate with an afternoon Triple-A game. You don’t stumble into being a baseball fan; you’re led.

If you became a baseball fan when you were a child, it probably involved a game of catch. I think my uncle was the first one to really play catch with me, but I also played with my dad plenty. At some point, though, you have your last game of catch with your father. You typically don’t know it. It’s something the two of you have always done, but over time, you play less and less catch. Suddenly, you haven’t played in years. And you didn’t even know it. Maybe it’s when you left for college. Maybe it’s when you hung up your glove after two agonizing years of tee ball. Maybe your dad throws out his shoulder, as many middle-aged men do, and you never get back to it. Maybe Dad left too soon, earlier than either of you hoped or expected.

It's what Field of Dreams is famous for. Really, ask yourself, if Kevin Costner asked Dwier Brown anything other than if he'd "wanna have a catch," would you remember the film for anything other than its poor pacing and dialogue? It doesn't truly become a tear-jerker until we start thinking about playing catch with our own fathers, grandfathers, uncles, what have you—because it's something that nearly every baseball fan of a certain age or experience understands: that one last catch with Dad. You didn't know during your last catch that it was your last catch. Or, for some, it's the yearning for their first catch with their father—a catch that never actually happened.

I had the privilege of knowing I was playing catch for the last time with my father. When I was 24, and Dad was 58, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s—a disease that slowly (though much faster than you’d ever hope) and irreversibly erodes the brain, leading to a loss of memory and executive function. It’s a terrible, terrible disease to watch someone experience, and I can only imagine (although I may someday know, or even not-quite-know) how terrible it is to live through.

A few months after his diagnosis, I was visiting home. My younger brother was spending the summer in our hometown before leaving for graduate school, and we’d planned to play catch that afternoon. My brother called me a bit later, saying he’d gotten busy with some friends and not to wait up for him. So my dad, sensing the opportunity, asked if I’d like to play catch for a bit.

I have no idea when he’d last thrown a baseball, let alone when we’d last played catch together. His arm was shot from years of throwing us batting practice, and I’d hung up my cleats after my junior year to focus on other sports.

I clocked what was happening in the moment, and I think he did, too. He made it through about ten overhand throws, his shoulder stiff from years of disuse, before switching to underhand. We played for maybe ten minutes before putting our gloves away for good. But for those ten minutes, we were both 20 years younger.

It’s been seven summers since that game of catch. By his 59th birthday, he required a walker to get around, after a lower back injury that he never recovered from. These days, Dad doesn’t do much talking. Or moving. Or even looking around. Once in a while, on a good day, you’ll look him in the eyes, and you’ll know that he knows who you are.

We both knew we’d reach a day like today. So I like to think something divine kept my brother away from our backyard that day. We both needed that game of catch. To this day, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth to have had it—tied for first place with thousands of people I'll never meet, and with Dad.

My story isn’t special. As I said, most people reading this of a certain age or experience have their own version of this story. There are an enormous number of people who would do anything to play catch with Dad one more time. I suspect many baseball fans think about exactly that every time the Field of Dreams game is played in Dyersville, Iowa. There’s the beauty of the players walking out of the corn, but there’s also the reminder of that final question. Hey, Dad. Wanna have a catch?

I’d planned on telling a version of this story about the man who coached me not only in baseball, but also in football, basketball, and track, at a later date. You know, that later date. But Thursday’s Twins-Phillies game hit home for me in a way that I wasn’t expecting. Every time MLB plays a game in that corn, I lower my head and shed a tear thinking about my own father.

But this time was different. Because when I lowered my head on Thursday to think about the big strong man that I used to play catch with, I saw my own newborn daughter, my firstborn, sleeping in my lap. She’d been born less than a week before; it was her first Twins game sitting in front of the TV with me. The Field of Dreams Game could have set an impossibly high bar, but given how the game played, I’m sure there are more magical Twins games in her future, if I’m successful in leading her to baseball fandom.

I have no idea if she’ll be a baseball fan. She might not even be a sports fan of any sort, and that’s okay with me. But I hope that someday she’ll ask me some version of that question. Hey Dad. Wanna have a catch? Although she’ll never get a chance to play catch with her grandfather, maybe she’ll feel his love playing catch with me. I felt that same connection to my own grandfather when my dad taught me how to throw his dad’s palmball, even though I’d never met him. And I hope that, until she’s ready to see me years later when I’m worn down by life, I can be half the man that I see my own dad as, when I imagine his former, able body walking out of the corn.

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[90stwinskid]

Beautifully written. Might be time to dust off my glove ask my dad for a catch. It's been too long.

Also, glad to see other sappy girl dads around here. :)

[Permanent Twins Fan]

Beautiful article. I always look forward to reading your articles, Gregg. Thank you.

[djvang]

And you "play catch". You don't have a catch".

[Eris]

Nice article. Thank you for sharing. 

[IndianaTwin]

Thanks for sharing. I'm walking the Alzheimer's journey with my mom these days as well. Though we never played catch, she would put baseball cards in my school lunch box from time to time. Would that when I'm 92, as she turned in July, if people ask how I'm doing, I can similarly say, "I'm content." 

I was at the Society for American Baseball Research convention in Cleveland a few weeks ago. I went to a session by the "Baseball Memories" group, an organization that has developed and delivered baseball reminiscence programs since 2015, in partnership with local and national organizations such as the Alzheimer's Association. 

See https://sabrbaseballmemories.org/.  

[strumdatjag]

2 hours ago, Eris said:

Nice article. Thank you for sharing. 

Whoever wrote that script had no idea about how the vast majority of us would say it.  It’s “PLAY CATCH”!!!!!! 
and by the way - It’s POP (in Minnesota not “Soda”).     Don’t let them easternize us! 

[Linus]

Well done Gregg. I lost my Dad last December and he was battling dementia. I discovered something very interesting. Sometimes when I called him he would be completely incoherent but if I mentioned the Twins he would snap out of it and become completely lucid. My Grandpa passed his love of baseball to my Dad, my Dad to me and now me to my son. Your beautiful story resonates with me deeply. 

[snellman]

40 minutes ago, strumdatjag said:

Whoever wrote that script had no idea about how the vast majority of us would say it.  It’s “PLAY CATCH”!!!!!! 
and by the way - It’s POP (in Minnesota not “Soda”.    Don’t let them easternize us! 

But, would the line be as memorable if it was Play catch vs have a catch.

Very beautifully written.  My "dad" didn't play catch we me a lot when I was younger, and I didn't meet my real dad until I was 19 and he passed away a year later so I never got to have a catch with him.

[gil4]

1 hour ago, strumdatjag said:

Whoever wrote that script had no idea about how the vast majority of us would say it.  It’s “PLAY CATCH”!!!!!! 
and by the way - It’s POP (in Minnesota not “Soda”.    Don’t let them easternize us! 

In the movie, Ray Kinsella was from NY and went to school at Berkley, so soda would probably be accurate. (He didn't do a very good job of becoming midwesternized.) 
 

At least it's not someplace where everything is a Coke.  "I'll have a coke."  "What kind."  "Sprite." 

[lecroy24fan]

Same for me with Grandpa to dad to me. Great article. I couldn't even tell you the last time I played catch with my dad. maybe when I was 10 or so. That would have been 40 years ago. He died in 2004. I would have loved to take him to Target Field.

[Matthew Lenz]

Beautifully written, Gregg!

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

An incredible article and tribute to your father. Baseball at its finest can tug my heartstrings in a way no other sport can, and I'd bet a good part of that is how easy it is to have a catch with whoever led you to the love of the game. Any time, any place. Just a couple of gloves and a ball, throw in a piece of lumber and you can play the entire game in your own backyard. 

After Kody Clemens' ultimate grand slam (not a huge fan of that name, since we're nitpicking phrases in these comments) I sent a text to my dad "I used to have this dream as a kid! Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, losing by 3 and down to your last strike, walkoff."

He sent back "That was my dream too. Still is" and I replied "You've got time"

Tonight, my reply reads differently. I am so much more grateful that he and I do still have time. I'm going to ask my dad to have a catch the next time I see him.