Dads and baseball and Father’s Day

Well dammit.

The whole Father’s Day thing was about to pass without these salty puddles all over my nice shirt. Then Jose Trevino happened.

Before Jose happened, we took a family trip to the ballpark, our adult son and daughter-in-law and little baby granddaughter, three generations celebrating family and baseball in a homey little minor league venue, cheesy reptile mascots and Recycle Man and even Clown Elvis roaming the field and hugging babies in the stands.

Somehow the whole day passed by, so perfect, so sunny, so happy, packed full with cold beers and hot wieners and spilled mustard and souvenir rally headbands and salute the flag and Take Me Out, and it just never crossed anyone’s mind to get all misty.

There were no tears when it dredged up iconic American traditions of dads and baseballs and muddy springtime games and volunteer umps and game-winning dogpiles and postgame ice cream and long heartbroken rides home with the dad you just let down when you bobbled that grounder. And easy games of catch in the back yard, lifelong joys and pain and trying to go back and fix whatever went wrong.

And somewhere in misty memory there’s a dad on a mound with a little white leather ball and a weighty chunk of Louisville Ash in your callow young hands, its grain and your veins connected, and when he grooves that pitch oh God there’s no feeling like the crack of that bat, nothing like watching that liner sail over his head into the empty outfield at the park, nothing like the look on his face when he turns back and gives you that hard-won smile.

There’s nothing like two grown men reliving it all with a simple ritual. And no line in any script, ever, as heartbreaking as those seven words…

“Hey? Dad? Ya wanna have a catch?”

An adult who misses those times with a father just gets tied in knots by that scene. That, plus, for me, maybe it’s the skinny pointy nose but the guy they picked for the movie bears a damn solid resemblance to my own strong young dad, a shortstop, a damn good one, who never stopped loving the game until the day he died ten years ago.

I miss him, goddammit, I miss him. I miss his throws, I miss the pop in his glove, I even miss the stench of his springtime-fresh Salems.

But all that stuff was stacked away this year, not a factor this Father’s Day. There was just too much joy and innocence and reveling in the way life renews itself and plants a seed in a tiny 6-month-old granddaughter. His great-granddaughter, who was named for him.

That happy dam held it all back, until the next morning.

Monday brought the story of Jose Trevino. A ballplayer whose late father’s last words to him were “You make me so proud. I love you, man.” Jose Trevino, whose young career jumped last week when his first child was born, and again two days later when he got called up to the Texas Rangers. Jose Trevino, who stood in the on-deck circle as a pinch hitter on his first Father’s Day, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and told a security guard, “I have a funny feeling about this…”

Jose Trevino stepped to the plate, his mom holding his seven-day-old baby and watching from the stands, and he delivered the walkoff RBI. With some help he knew was coming.

“It’s crazy how things work out… in baseball and life.”

Monday morning, about the time that interview video was going around, Jose Trevino got the word. The Rangers were sending him back to Double A Frisco.

Seems like everyone loves the happy stories, even when they’re heartbreak-happy. The stuff nobody wants to talk about, well, that stuff starts triggering some real bad shit when you throw the rest of the mess in there, broken trust, abuse, rebellion, depression, suicide, failed relationships, dominoes falling year after year until one day you look back from old age and it’s all a road map of inevitability.

That whole dynamic is a whirlwind of complex emotion in Diamonds and Dirt. Readers may finish it and wonder just what the hell happened. And that’s OK, because it only scratches the surface.

For now, what a moment for Jose. Happy Father’s Day, man. Even when you’re down there with the Frisco Roughriders, it’s gotta be a beautiful world.