SPANHISH HARLEM – Today will be a special moment for you if your a baseball fan and also a movie fan (looking at you Angry Ward). Field of Dreams is considered a sports movie but there are also tear-jerk moments that makes you think its more than that. I love that movie and its the story that gets me… baseball being my favorite sport made it that much better.
To me, it was a guy missing his dad. I lost mine when I was 20 and it a profound effect on me. He was a great person and while we had our issues growing up, he was always there for me. I wasn’t the easiest person to deal with because I had a bad temper and as you can imagine, we bumped heads a lot. I guess he saw a lot of him in me and didn’t want me to end up on the wrong side of things. As much as he told me, I had to make the mistakes myself and learn from them. On top of that he was harsh. I grew up when parents hit their kids and the belt was my enemy. He didn’t want to hit me but that’s the way he was raised and usually it would end with him crying and telling me to do better. Eventually, I realized that doing bad things had repercussions and just when I was old enough to really appreciate him… I lost him.
Another part that always gets me – the playing catch scene. I’ll start by saying that my dad wasn’t an athlete. He didn’t grow up playing sports because sports wasn’t a big thing growing up in Puerto Rico like it is for kids growing up in the States. The only sport he loved was boxing and those are memories for another day but he learned to loved baseball, football and basketball because of me and my brother. He learned to love the Yankees because we loved the Yanks. He even picked his favorite football team, the Chicago Bears because he loved Mike Ditka for no reason other than he looked cool.
I just realized I lost myself but here is why the catching scene always makes me cry: My dad didn’t always play catch with me but I remember this one day, we were at Bear Mountain. My brother and I had brought our gloves but he didn’t want to play catch with me. My dad came over and he asked me if I wanted to play catch and I was like “Pa, you don’t play baseball.” He wasn’t the best baseball player but he was the best dad and those are the moments I miss the most.
Yeah, I know this is not about the New York Yankees playing at Field of Dreams but I hope you like it anyway.
That’s it for now, come back tomorrow.
