While Everything Else Was Waiting

A night at the ballpark in a season of uncertainty

It had started around Christmas. I had flown across the country from Seattle and rented a house on Cape Cod for the holidays, hoping to include my family in a holiday that we had not been able to share since I moved west. I was disappointed they couldn’t come, but more concerned by the symptoms my mother was describing and that my father was experiencing.

By spring, the situation had become dire. My father was at Yale Medical Center in New Haven, his liver failing. Encephalopathy, a common byproduct of a failing liver of which I had not been familiar but was now witnessing firsthand, had begun creeping into his brain. I flew east to spend time with him, unsure of what the future would hold or how long he might have, and to help my mother in whatever way I could. Walking into that dimly lit hospital room, I was struck by how unfamiliar he seemed. His skin looked different, off somehow. His mind wandered into long, looping tirades, reciting math equations out loud, bringing up old complaints, and drifting into sudden bouts of dread, all coming on without any true warning. Watching someone you love lose their mental footing is terrifying in a way that’s difficult to articulate. It’s somehow bigger than heartbreak. It’s fear, layered with a deep sense of helplessness.

I spent several long days sitting in his hospital room, holding his hand when he was clear enough to notice and talking when conversations were possible. The baseball season had just started, and the Mets had just opened their new ballpark, Citi Field. Their games played softly on the television while I stayed into the evening. Dad seemed to snap back to attention when I shared with him my favorite memories of going to Shea Stadium, the Mets’ longtime ballpark, and told him I was sad to see the old dump torn to the ground. He agreed with a faint smile. But we also agreed it was time for a change. Things seemed to be changing for all of us – for the Mets, for New York, and for my family.

Photo by Tomas Eidsvold on Unsplash

As Dad and I sat there, I wondered if there would be a new beginning for him as well. The doctors were fully transparent with me. Without a transplant, there were limits to what they could do for him. Mom and I stood in the hallway and cried openly. My relationship with my father had been far from perfect. We shared baseball and a few other interests in common, but we had endured numerous fractures throughout the years. Still, seeing him in that state, and watching the impact it was having on my mother, and more quietly, my brother, who lived with them, made everything else feel small and unimportant.

Towards the end of my East Coast stay, my brother and I slipped away into New York for a few hours. Like my father, my brother and I had a complicated relationship, often manifesting as frustration and resentment toward one another. But baseball had always been a common language for the two of us as well. When life felt like it was holding its breath, there was one place where we knew we could sit with that feeling rather than fight it.

It was only the fourth home game in the Mets’ new ballpark. We arrived early, as had always been the custom when we went to Shea Stadium with Dad growing up, and wandered the concourses before climbing up to our cheap seats in the very last row in deep left field. My brother complained about the amenities and what modern ballparks had become. I didn’t mind his complaints or those amenities. In fact, I even enjoyed listening to his criticism. It felt familiar. The game itself was a solid distraction, something to focus on while everything else in our family was unresolved.

In the seventh inning with the Mets trailing by a run, Gary Sheffield stepped up to the plate. New to the Mets but not to the game, his presence felt oddly steady. His stance was unmistakable – bat wagging, body loose, the swing that followed coming full of power but also seemingly effortless. He drove a pitch high down the left-field line. My brother and I had moved to standing room along the first-base side earlier, and we watched the ball carry out of the ballpark.

Only afterward did it register for each of us that it was his 500^th career home run, a major milestone for any major leaguer.

We caught each other’s eyes and let out a hearty laugh. Nothing in life was resolved, and the Sheffield bomb did nothing more than tie the game. Outside the stadium, waiting for us an hour away back in Connecticut, everything Dad and Mom and the rest of us were going through was still waiting. But in that second, my brother and I were there together. The crowd roared, and life went on. As the Mets poured out of the dugout to congratulate Sheffield on his accomplishment, we got to exist together in a place that didn’t require any answers. We could just relish the moment.

The Mets went on to win that game with a walk-off single in the bottom of the 9^th. When we left the ballpark and hit the road, heading over the Whitestone Bridge, up the Hutchinson River Parkway, and crossing the state line into Connecticut, Dad was still lying in that hospital bed up in New Haven. We were all still waiting to see what his fate would be. But that night reminded me that when nothing in our lives feels fixable, being present still has its value. That sometimes the most we can do is sit where we are, soak in the little moments, and make room for uncertainty.