In 1927 my father was on a baseball team that was the champion Brooklyn
team.
They played against the
1927 Bronx champion team at McCombs Dam Park, which was next door to
Yankee Stadium.
The Bronx team was coached by Babe Ruth, the Brooklyn's by Lou Gehrig.
Later on, dad was made an offer by the Yankees to enter their farm
system. Like Babe Ruth, he was a pitcher but could hit a country mile
... he could hit like a mule. He threw the most remarkable knuckle ball
and taught my brother and me to throw it. (When he threw one overhand
with a softball it really danced!) My mother would not let him do it as
ball players made very little back then. So it goes.
My sister told the Yankees that my father is going to be 106 on
03 June 2016, and the Yankees sent him a ton of stuff and they are going to
do some special thing for him at a game if he comes up from Florida
(P.S., he chose not to).
Dad has outlived my mother and my sister; will probably outlive my
brother who is in grim shape (he did), and me? I don't know.
(Guess not.)
That is the problem with living forever, everyone you knew is dead. Remarkable, there is nothing wrong with him, no senility, no disease. He is as annoying as they were back when they forgot I was coming home from Vietnam and left me at the airport, renamed John F. Kennedy, from Idlewilde.
God bless him, and all of us, too.
This was written before Dad passed. I expect he is now back with the
whole gang, while I take the place of waiting.