A Unit Of One
For his 67th birthday, I sent my father a book about the history of the Los Angeles Dodgers. When I spoke to him on the phone, he seemed a little puzzled.
"I don't like the Dodgers."
I didn't try to explain much; talking on the phone then was hard for him. He had almost no voice and ran out of oxygen fairly quickly. I just hoped that he'd get a chance to look through the book and maybe understand why I sent it, but there wasn't enough time. He passed away four days later, maybe never understanding that my intention was to remind him that I always listened to his stories.
He was a fan of the Dodgers in the 1960s, when he lived in Southern California. I'd talk to him about this sometimes, trying to find one more connection, this time baseball. I'd ask a lot about Sandy Koufax, a mystery man to me, a stunning pitcher who quit in his prime rather than risk the injury he saw coming.
I thought maybe the pictures from those days and those teams would be nice for him to look through.
I'm not really good with gifts.
We did make a baseball connection, though, finally. After he moved on to other sports, mostly football, in the spring of 2001 my parents moved from New Mexico to Arizona for retirement, and Arizona, it turned out, now had a baseball team. So Dad watched.
Trying to explain passion for baseball to someone not interested is like trying to explain algebra to a 3-year-old; they see your mouth moving and hear the words, but that's about it. A six-month season divisible by 154 meaningless but eventually important games, little gains and little losses, a game made for radios in the garage while you're doing something else.
And, if you're fortunate, if you love a team and follow them regularly, at least once in your life you'll experience an honest-to-God pennant chase, when baseball rises to another level and antacids are in order.
I had this in the late summer and fall of 1995. My Seattle Mariners, after a lifetime of disappointments, had suddenly exploded after the All-Star Game, and combined with an amazing collapse by the division-leading Anaheim Angels we got a horse race, when a gap of games in the 'teens suddenly dropped every day. I remember going to see my doctor and watching physicians walk the halls with headphones on, listening. The season ended in a tie, and a tie-breaker, and we won.
So I went to the first playoff game in Mariner history, sitting behind the bullpen, watching Randy Johnson warm up to face the Yankees. We were down 0-2 in a five-game series, but we were home and we had Randy. We won, we won the next one, and then in Game 5, when things were tight and everything was on the line, with our pitching collapsing and the end in sight, everyone looked toward left field. There, on two days' rest, walking toward the mound, was The Big Unit. And we won, Edgar Martinez hitting a double deep and Ken Griffey scoring from first, and I was done. They didn't make the Series and I didn't care; I'd had my baseball moment.
I'd watched Randy Johnson for years, watched him as a 20-something wild man, a tremendous fast ball but not much else, whose strike-outs were matched by his walks, and saw him grow into what he would become. I watched him pitch a no-hitter in 1990 and saw him get close other times, including one nearly perfect game. Afterwards, he was calm.
"I'm not a perfect pitcher," he said.
He'd made his off-season home in Arizona, so eventually we lost him, sad but grateful. And my dad got him, and we had another connection.
As I say, you can only hope that once in your life you get a chase, a spectacular season. My Mariners had another one, actually, in 2001, the year my parents moved to Arizona and Dad became a Diamondbacks booster. We won 116 games that year, tying the record. It was a glorious season, played by a team that discovered how to win games, and won almost all of them.
They weren't a team to win a championship, as it turned out; those are two different things. A seven-game series is a sprint, not a marathon, and requires pitching that can overwhelm. The Mariners didn't have that.
As it turned out, the Diamondbacks did. They had Randy and Curt Schilling, two dominating pitchers, so in his first season back to baseball, his new team, his newly acquired interest in this strange but wonderful game, my dad got a champion on his first try. And he became a believer, for something of a cynical man, in Randy Johnson.
So I've been thinking a lot about Dad in the past two days, since hearing the news Tuesday night. At the age of 40, 14 years after his first no-hitter, Randy Johnson pitched a perfect game.
A few years ago, back when he was still a Mariner, Randy lost his father, and he began a tradition. When he wins a game, he points toward the sky. This is for you, Dad As he did Tuesday night.
It's been five months now. Grief turns to something else in five months, begins to mellow, settles in for the long haul. There are moments, though, when I still want to reach for the phone. Like the night, for a few hours, that Randy was a perfect pitcher.
I apologize to those of you who aren't interested in baseball who've read so far. I would only say that it's not all about baseball.
It's about a connection, a connection I cherished, a connection between two different men who struggled to find common ground, and were grateful when they found it, even if it was just a dumb game.
Did you see that, Dad? Randy pitched a perfect game!
I saw, son. I saw. Wouldn't have missed it.
10:29:35 AM 
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