My eight-year-old fingers always burned as I tried to flip the tortillas on the open fire. I can never remember much about those days, or that old stove except that its flame was not a faint one. It didn’t matter - somehow I knew that I was proving myself to my dad, and that’s what mattered. There was a comfortable chair next to our little kitchen that I think he liked to enjoy his Dodger games from; and from where his blue-blooded passion did indeed precipitate mine.
Through stolen glances and my crispy-digit pain, I always saw him watching me though, and not his team, as I pridefully made my snacks without asking for help once. Among the green grasses and bats cracking on the tv screens of that fleeting time, was a feeling of protection and nascent camaraderie with my father. That is the first season of baseball that I can truly remember, and that is also the last year I really had with my Dad.
Housed in the memories between my father and I, a precious few moments like this are still carried with me. Lingering within that background not too far, always the Dodgers, and always personified through the love, tender care, and incomparable talents of a Mr. Vincent Edward Scully. There aren’t enough words…
