Summer Time and Baseball ...
My dad loved baseball. He wasn't a big sports fan but he loved listening to the games on the radio.
I grew up in a typical middle class Southern California neighborhood. The city was Long Beach and the summers were amazing. Just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean our homes didn't have air conditioning. It did get warm but it was always bearable.
Mom and I always knew when summer had officially arrived. My dad would wheel in the big box fan and set it in the middle of the hall way next to the front door. The idea was the fan would pull the hot air out of the bedrooms and blow it out the front door .... never made much sense to me but my dad thought it was a good plan and continued to do it as long as we lived there.
At night I would lay in my bed with King, our Dalmatian dog at my side and listen to the whirr of the fan. On the nights that the Los Angeles Dodgers played baseball my dad would have the game playing on the radio in their bedroom. Vin Scully would call the game, his voice and the whirring fan would lull me off to sleep. In the morning I would ask my dad who won the game .... he never new, he fell asleep listening to the game the same way I did. I don't recall my dad ever attending a ball game, but he listened every summer night and has passed that love of the game on to me.
I'm not a Dodger fan these days, my boys play for the Angels ... after all they wear my favorite color - red and the Big A is just a few miles from my home! However, I have been known to turn on a Dodger game on a warm summer night just to hear Vin Scully call the game. Nobody does it better then Vin.
Happy Father's Day dad ... you are so missed.
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| My dad never was a fan of the movies, however, he would have liked this one, he was a Robinson fan. |
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| Sandy Kofax was a name I grew up hearing on the radio. |
