Catching Soap Bubbles at the Ballpark

Today's Hemingway shares his love (of baseball) with his young kids

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Today’s Hemingway is Chris DeLotell. Chris is a school counselor at Anderson High School. A graduate of Mason High School and the University of Kentucky, Chris spent 18 years coaching high school basketball, and now serves as an Anderson Township Little League coach pitch manager and the de facto delivery man for his wife’s thriving small business, Home Baked by Jen. He loves his family, traveling and baseball.

Morning Mobsters! What an honor to try to fill the hiking boots of my good friend and I hope yours, the estimable PDoc. 

It’s Friday, and I’ve only got one crack at this, so I’d like to go a little off the agate page here and talk about the way live sports is influencing how my wife and I are trying to raise our kids. First, permit me a little self-analysis about what growing older - and having kids - does to one’s (previously self-absorbed) perspective. The path from know to show to learn.

As a teenager, I wanted to know things. I devoured baseball statistics, historical facts, and news articles. My reading consisted of books about baseball history (Boys of Summer, undefeated and untied as the most formative book of my youth), Presidential history (John Quincy Adams lived a fascinating life), and leadership manuals (The Smart Take from the Strong by Pete Carril is a personal favorite).

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In my twenties, I wanted to show things. It was a decade spent trying to act older than I was, to show off my collected knowledge and ahead-of-his-years skill. My reading consisted of, well, not nearly as much of anything. There were ladders to climb, games to win, people to impress.

In my thirties, I want to learn things. Facts matter, they are important. But thinking deeply about values and morals and the journey of a good life, and then trying to live it…that’s the stuff that seems to matter a lot more as middle age creeps up ever closer. So I’ve turned to fiction, where all the best lessons on the bookshelf are buried. Particularly, to the fiction of writers like Fredrik Backman. Stories about family, marriage, parenting…the effort at a life well lived, and the stumbles and successes along the way. 

Backman, who is most famous for “A Man Called Ove,” wrote this wonderful trilogy about a small town and its hockey team. Both the town and the first book in the series are called “Beartown.” Check it out. In the second book, “Us Against You,” there’s a great line that I think about a lot; it’s one that has influenced my choices as a parent. 

“Sons want their fathers’ attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons’. From then on, we’re all doomed to wish that we’d fallen asleep beside them more often, while their head could still fit on our chest. Hugged them while they still let us.”

That’s just as true of daughters as it is of sons. And in our family, this is how it shows up: I have no idea how long my kids will want to go to games with me - I hope until I’m too old to climb the stadium stairs - but right now, they want to. So we are going to go. And go. And go. We have Bengals season tickets, and Xavier basketball. 

But the defining quest of our family’s childhood phase is our goal to visit every Major League Baseball stadium and city before our kids graduate high school. Molly and Drew DeLotell are going to see the country through the lens of baseball. Before we could start this mission to visit 30 stadiums, before we even visited one, they had to fall in love with baseball first. That mission has been accomplished, thanks to baseball cards, city connect jerseys (Padres!), youtube highlights, and incredible interactions with some players before games. 

We’re now a few months away from being a third of the way there. We’ve visited seven stadiums, with four on deck this summer, and with a loose sketch of how we will get to all 30 by 2034. We’ve got to get to them while we can. There’s another great line in “Us Against Them”: “Fathers need to seize the day, because childhoods are like soap bubbles; you get only a few seconds to enjoy them.”

In thinking about this essay, Doc asked me a simple and challenging question: Why baseball? What is it about baseball that makes it our connective game of choice?

There’s logistics - we’re teachers, and summer brings open roads, friendly skies, and the gift of time. There’s cost - have you looked at NFL ticket prices lately? And there’s weather - trudging through wind, snow, rain, and chill with two pre-adolescents isn’t my idea of a good time. But, as is so often the case, something down in the roots is involved too.

Baseball offers two things that are in short supply these days, and two things that we want, desperately, for our children: Time and Space. I’m going to quote from fiction again. Claire Keegan is Doc’s kind of writer - Irish, melancholy, succinct, wise. She writes these novellas that just knock you flat. In her newest one, “Foster”, a young girl with inattentive, unloving parents is sent away for the summer to live with acquaintances of her parents who, it becomes clear, care for her in a way that her parents will not. The girl notices immediately. “But this is a different type of house,” Keegan writes. “Here there is room, and time to think.”

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Have you ever gone to an NFL stadium and thought, “Here there is room, and time to think?” But a baseball park is a different type of house. We can sit and watch the game for a few innings, learning how to crack peanuts and keep score. Then we can go to the playground or batting cage or Bernie Brewer’s chalet for a little while. And then we can get our helmet sundae, go back to our seats, and still catch most of the action. In all of that time, we can sit together and just be, in a way that no other sport offers. What I’ve learned is that we must take all the time and space we can find, and we must create as much of it as possible, for ourselves and our families.

So that’s what we’ll do, for as long as we can keep those soap bubbles floating in the air.

AND NOW. . . Hey Michelle makes your weekend complete. As always.

Taste of Cincinnati ~ Nothing screams the start of Summer more than this event. Great live music all weekend and more food and drink than ever before. Saturday -Monday all along 5th St. over 77 food vendors will be selling some Cincy delights. Sat 11-11, Sun 11-11 and Mon 11-8.

Coney Island Opening Weekend ~ Opening day is Saturday and they have new exciting things for this season Pickleball, Street Curling, Soccer Billiards, Fowling and more

Skate the night away ~ Sawyer Points skating rink has been brought back to life. Saturday 7-10 join in the fun for Green Light Night.. with free skating and a DJ. Limited rentals available. Honestly even if you don’t want to skate come watch there is some seriously talented skaters in Cincy!! 

Chug-A-Lug Relay ~ Wiedeman Brewery is having their 5th annual 1 mile run! Saturday. Family fun event benefitting the St. Bernard Ludlow Grove Historical Society. 

Strawberry Picking ~ McGlasson’s Farm in Hebron, Ky I did this last weekend and I loved it! Grab the fam or a friend and hit the country for some of the sweetest berries around. 

Dave Matthews Band~ Riverbend Saturday 7:30.. bring on the concerts!

Hey Michelle,

Do you want to know where to eat, drink and have fun in Cincinnati? Follow me @HeyMichelle1 on IG .

For Imbiber Dave, an adult soda is par for the course.

Imbibing happened on the golf course this week. Maybe you’ve been outside lately. If you have, I’m confident you’ll agree it has been pretty, pretty, pretty good (please read in your best Larry David voice).

Golf is just a long walk outside where you occasionally hit a stationary ball toward a hole marked with a flag on a closely mown lawn. Sounds simple but it isn’t easy. This sport can be one of the most frustrating experiences of your life.

But it’s all about the power of perspective. If you have the right attitude, the enjoyment you can glean from a few hours in the sun is almost immeasurable, even if your score versus par isn’t so great.

If a walk intimidates you, then feel free to get a plushy golf cart to ride around in. Yes they have cup holders. It’s almost like they designed these things for a purpose. If you suck at golf, please refer to imbibing in golf cart outside on a beautiful day. It’s honestly pretty hard to mess up.

As we approach Memorial Day, it looks like the solid vibes will continue. So go imbibe outdoors.

I even hope to take a walk with our fearless editor in chief sometime soon!

Cheers!
cincybeerguydave@gmail.com

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Loved Cat Stevens in high school, ditched him soon after. I was too hip, too cynical, too something. We outgrow the groups of our youth.

(See: Overdrive, Bachman Turner.)

Maybe we return. I’ve no desire to bring BTO’s Not Fragile back to my turntable. But in the past month or so, I have listened again to Tea for the Tillerman, one of Cat’s early albums that includes the knowing tune, Father and Son.

In honor of today’s Hemingway, sort of, here’s another Cat favorite.

Oh very young. What will you leave us this time?