My father, Paul, never asked for material gifts. Ever. He was the king of “as long as I have my family, I don’t need anything else.”
Until 2018.
The only thing my father asked for as a birthday gift was a TV for our patio so he could watch New York Yankees baseball while he gardened.
So, we got the TV.
My father worked hard. He was kind, loving and passionate about his life. He was the type of guy you could call at 4:00 in the morning to bring you to the hospital.
He was the type of guy who would move mountains for you if you needed him to.
He was the type of guy who sold homemade pizzas to his coworkers on Friday mornings for three years to pay for our garage in cash.
He was the type of guy who, no matter what happened in his crappy day working at Raymour & Flanigan, would still come home with a smile.
The joy that beamed from my father’s face when my mother, Crystal, opened the garage door to the TV was incredible. I have never seen someone pull out the Wi-Fi password so fast and get a TV hooked up. My mother made a Yankees-themed lunch, and we got to watching.
He got a full summer out of the TV, watching games outside while pulling weeds from our flower beds on the weekends. My mother got her use out of it, too, watching “The Pioneer Woman” on Food Network while my brother and I swam in the pool.
My father was always jealous of my mother since she got summers off as a teacher, but he always said he’d probably get fired from teaching because of his foul mouth.
The TV was mounted to a rolling stand, so he was able to roll it into the garage to watch Dallas Cowboys games during football season, often accompanied by yelling about how bad his team was. The sounds of football and the soft background music of Darius Rucker drifting through the garage were all my father needed as he worked on his prized possession, a 1964 Chevy C10 Stepside, after a chaotic family dinner.
I’m glad we got the TV.
On April 20, 2019, my father passed away unexpectedly from sudden arrhythmic cardiac arrest. It was the day before Easter, and he was getting ready to watch the Yankees game on the TV while doing our mulching for the season. He wanted to make sure our yard looked nice before the rest of our family came over for brunch the next morning.
We never watched that TV again.
That big screen is stuck in 2019, where the Yankees won 9-2 against the Kansas City Royals that night after we got back from the hospital. We sold it to a family friend a few weeks later.
I’m still glad we got the TV.
It gave my father joy to be able to do his two favorite hobbies, watching baseball and gardening, side by side. Baseball brought my father and me together. It was our bonding point. My father didn’t know much about the dance classes I took or what songs I learned in my piano lessons, but he always knew that I would be on that couch next to him to watch the game.
He often referred to our family as a team. Everyone called us Team Ponto. Friends, family, neighbors, strangers. So much so that my mother got it engraved on his headstone. It was really special.
In a Facebook post after he passed, my mother wrote, “The kids and I attempted our ‘new normal’ today and it was hard, but Paul always said we were ‘Team Ponto,’ and although our head coach is gone, we’ll continue to run the bases and try to hit it out of the park for him.”
It was hard watching baseball for a while after his passing. It felt like a betrayal. It still does, but you get better at managing these feelings the older you get.
I turned to my cousin, George, or “Geo” as I call him, and his father, my uncle Tom, to be my new baseball-watching pals. It’s not the same, and they know that, but it’s fun to watch games again.
George is 18 now and in college at the University at Buffalo, so we can’t watch baseball together like we used to. But I emailed and interviewed him for this to get his insight on what baseball means to him.
We have always been Yankees fans, but George and I really started following baseball as a whole in 2022. When asked what makes Yankees baseball exciting for him, George said that “the Yankees are an organization that prides itself on class, history and respect. I think seeing the development of that every year is a must-see. There is no other franchise in which legacy matters as much.”
Just like my father and I, George uses baseball as a way to bond with his father.
“In fact, I think it’s the main reason my dad and I have gotten so close over the years. We used to fight or not talk, but after being able to sit down and watch a game, or even just talk about it, it’s definitely cooled us off and given us something to bond over. But of course I love talking Yanks with my cousin, too.”
George’s father and my father were inseparable growing up. Wherever there was Paul, there was Tom. When my father died, it took a toll on our family and its dynamic. Both George and I have struggled with our mental health in the past, and we both have turned to baseball as a distraction.
“I had struggles with mental health problems like anxiety, OCD and depression at one point. I think there’s good distractions and bad distractions,” George said. “Baseball is a distraction from a viewer’s perspective to me, but it’s a good one and a healthy one.”
We have both agreed that the Yankees are a good connector and sense of community for people in and out of the Bronx. It’s almost a lifestyle.
George said that “I think it’s because a ball club is a legacy, a pride and a family itself. It might be hard to show your love for your family, who is your team, but it might be easier to show that love through pinstripes.”
George hopes to have kids one day and wants to try to give them what his father gave him. He believes that everyone should have “a team,” whether that is your family and friends, a professional one, or ideally both.
“I’m even making my girlfriend a baseball girlfriend, too!”
With that, buy the TV. Watch the baseball game. Hug your loved ones tight.
