Memories in A Baseball Card

It’s been almost five years since my childhood friend Keith passed away suddenly at age 40. Keith and I met in 7^th grade when we started junior high together, and we became fast friends and pretty much inseparable all the way through high school.

We went our separate ways after that, as he headed off to Oklahoma Baptist University and I went down to UCSD, but we always stayed in touch, and I saw him several times over the years despite the fact that we never again lived in the same state.

Keith later married and had two children. He and his family were living in Tennessee when he passed. He had spent several years as a stay-at-home dad, working as a freelance editor and writer mainly with the Baptist church in town.

Tradition: Dad, Daughter, and The Grand Old Ballgame

Our father-daughter rite of spring: our first Giants game of the new season.

This past Sunday my daughter and I attended our first Giants game of the year. It was one of the Giants’ lesser efforts on this young season, a listless 4-1 loss to the lowly Pirates, but the game result mattered little.

After going to just one game in her first 10 years, my daughter and I have been going to multiple games together every year since my divorce seven years ago, and she’s become as big a fan as I am. We were lucky enough to be at Game One of the 2010 World Series, and we’ve been at Giants FanFest the past couple of years as well, where she realized her dream of meeting Brian Wilson in 2011, blowing right past one of my old heroes, Will Clark, to do so.