So tomorrow is my dad's birthday. He will be a young 71 years old. To his credit he never looks his age. In fact, he usually looks far younger than his age. Also, he tends to act younger than his age and that is a very good thing. Most people know that he lives in Minnesota now. He hates winter. You won't hear my blame him for that. My daughter and I made one trip there one early January. We will not make that mistake again. Minnesota cold is far worse than you can begin to imagine. Lucky for him he is a doctor so he can escape some of the winter by traveling south. He usually has two or three trips to warmer climate areas on the calendar following the holidays. Right now he is in San Diego. We aren't sure he is going to come home. Chances are he will get back just in time for the golf season on the formerly frozen tundra. We will probably try to make it up there in July. But that isn't the point of this post.

He called me tonight. He is sitting in Petco Park watching the San Diego Padres play the Los Angeles Dodgers. Sorry rascal. I guess he is just following through on a family tradition in terms of baseball. His father was a ballplayer on semipro teams across Arkansas and Lousiana. His uncles all played on the same team. I have a memory of talking to that grandfather about baseball. There is also a memory of playing baseball games at family reunions. It seems that my love of the game is hereditary. Like we said here before, some people think football is the main topic of my brain. The real truth is that baseball is my first love. It always has been.

I played the game for 12 years growing up. That includes summer ball from the first grade until the summer after graduation. If my memory isn't too far gone then the only position that I did not play was catcher. This also includes playing in high school. Oh, I didn't play much then since almost every starter was an all star. But there I was going through practice as well as keeping records for the team. My very first real paycheck was for $50 from a newspaper in Texarkana for calling in our scores. I even called in the story of the night we won the Regional championship back in 1977. Then there were countless games played with a neighbor with a rubber baseball so we could use part of our garage as a backstop. As Robert Redford said in the movie The Natural...I love baseball.

Players like Bob Gibson were my heroes. The 1968 World Series would be on the television when the bus dropped me off after school. My friend was a Cubs fan. Let's hope he has not suffered much since those days. The only team we got on a regional telecast was the Houston Astros. Those were the days of Jim Wynn, Don Wilson, Larry Dierker and the such. Back then about the only time you got a game on TV was the Saturday Game of the Week. Now I can watch as many games in a day as they play. Such is the benefit of satellite television with a baseball package. You won't ever convince me that the greatest pitcher of our modern era was Sandy Koufax in the early 60s. He threw four no hitters in about six years. Even the great Nolan Ryan needed over twenty years to get his seven gems accomplished.

How do you know of my love for baseball? My daughter's middle name is indeed for the great Nolan Ryan. Her middle name is Ryan. She was born at the tail end of his career. I gave in on the first name but would not budge nor negotiate the middle. She is my protege when it comes to the game. I remember making her stretch out on the couch with me when she was young to watch baseball on cable. She indeed endured many an endless if not mindless account of some obscure baseball piece of trivia. Now at Christmas we go by the ballpark in Arlington to get her present from the gift shop. One year it was a personalized jersey. One year it was an autographed photo of her favorite player. This year it was a Texas Ranger baseball hoodie. By the way, her favorite player is Hank Blalock of the Rangers. He named his first child ...Trey Ryan.

My autistic son goes with us in the summer to ballgames. He loves the atmosphere and especially the food. He cannot wait to get to his seat to clap, cheer and just take it all in. He may not be able to quote statistics but it is obvious my love for baseball somehow dipped into his gene pool. In the last two years I had the honor of visiting with members of the Rangers media as well as Josh Hamilton who is just a phenom when it comes to the game. We do not yet have tickets for a game yet this year. We are checking calendars so we do not interfere with her schoolwork. But you can be sure that we will make a few games this summer.

There is no spiritual point to this post. Although, heaven is rumored to be in a baseball field in Iowa. I have my doubts about the theological basis of this. But if heaven turns out to be an old cornfield then that is fine by me. Right now the Rangers are 2-0 for the first time in nine years. I think I will go read through the book of Revelation to see if that just might be one of the signs of the times. You never know!

Bro. Trey