Life Coach
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad
By Curtis Silver

No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.
~Paul Gallico

I grew up in Florida. There was always a league, always a practice, always a game. My father made sure of that. There was no getting around it. Not that I had a huge problem with playing team sports, though through the grade school years I much rather preferred unorganized sports (sandlot baseball, front yard football and driveway basketball). Of course, the thing about being a kid is that you don’t have much of a choice. Except on the sport itself. I played baseball throughout most of my youth, and for many of those years, my father never sat in the stands. No, he was in the dugout.

My father grew up in the Cleveland suburbs during a time when it was okay for kids to take the bus by themselves to go see a baseball game at the stadium. Which is exactly what he did. He also played ball growing up and was very athletic. I’ve seen pictures. He was a freaking stud. He also had the added task of helping to raise his four younger siblings. I’m sure that stress had something to do with his love for fitness. Eventually it led him to the military, where he served in the Navy. (Keep reading)