Between the Pitches

At Wrigley with My Daughter

In 2014, during my Baseball Buddha Tour, I stopped in Chicago for a Sunday game at Wrigley (not even sure it was a Sunday, felt like a Sunday). My daughter, who was in college then, came down from Milwaukee to meet me. She’s always been a girly girl, and I mean that in the best way. Stylish, smart, full of joy.

“Yeah sports, go team!” she would say with a smirk.

We’ve always been close.

We grabbed bleacher seats and soaked up what felt like a postcard-perfect day. Blue skies. Wind gently curling through the ivy. You could smell beer and brats in the breeze. I couldn’t tell you who the Cubs played or who pitched. The details of the game? Long gone.

But one thing I’ll never forget is her asking me, somewhere around the third inning:

"Why do you like this game so much? It’s kind of boring." I don’t think it was “kind of”, it was for her, very boring.

She said it with curiosity, not judgment. But it hit me. Not because she didn’t get it but because I realized I had never really shown her the g…