All The Best People

There’s picture in the desk draw of my parents with Michele and me at Comiskey Park in the summer of 1990.  From looking at it, you’d never know my father’s stepfather had wanted to get rid of his two stepsons.  That’s the hand some people are dealt in life.

Bob Harris, my father-in-law, always liked my dad, maybe because they had something in common; Bob’s mother did in fact get rid of him, in a way, placing him and his twin brother in an orphanage around the age of eight.  There was a silver lining, though.  Bob met Merle, the love of his life and wife of 66 years, in the home by the time he was ten.

Bob and I didn’t always get along in the 42 years we knew one another, strong personalities and all.  Among other things, he loved college sports while I go more for the pros.  But he was a Sox fan, I think in part because Hank Greenberg was an American Leaguer.  After he aged out of the home, Bob would take Merle on dates to see the Sox play; they liked sitting in upper deck in right field.  This would’ve been at the tail end of Luke Appling’s career and the beginning of Chico Carrasquel’s.  My father-in-law loved how shortstops could throw from deep in the hole.

Bob also like the Cardinals, both for their uniform and Go-Go style of play.  On occasion, he even spoke fondly of Stan Musial, which could have been code for trying to make peace with me.  Our wars ended long ago (and let me note here Bob was too stubborn to pick up the Bronze Star he earned while fighting in Korea), so that in recent years I was in charge of coming up with books for my senior-aged pupil to read.  He was a good student and died too young, at the age of 88, yesterday morning.

Looking at my wife’s father and my own, I know this if nothing else in life, that all the best people went to Comiskey Park to root for the White Sox.