Chuck HHappy Father's Day Weekend
June 19th 2009 13:16
I still remember back in the Little League days when my father was coaching my team, the Allston North Little League Yankees (see above photo of me and sis waiting for the ole man to take us to the field! ha). A lot of those games blend together in my head as one big game now of course. Certain games stick out and will always be remembered. Our championship...what a great day!! A classic beatdown! Ha.. As a father, I don’t know if you realize that when you say certain things at that point of a kids life, how much of an impact you can have on your son or daughter. It’s weird how you remember certain instances and things that were said to you as a kid. I remember after one game--in the car on the way home-- I was somewhat bragging about a double that I had hit. It was at that point my father said to me, “if you were running hard instead of watching the ball sail and hit off top of the fence, you would’ve had a triple.” Now, I was a pretty good ballplayer and I was on the cocky side when I was younger when it came to baseball so I needed that to be said to me. At the time though, I remember thinking to myself, what the hell more do I have to do in a game!! I had 3 hits and knocked in a bunch of runs and this guy wants to tell me that if I ran harder instead of admiring a double, that I could’ve had a triple? But, you see, he was absolutely right that night. I remembered that statement and it drove me throughout all of my high school years, right into junior college ball. You don’t take a play off, you don’t admire what you just did--- you run hard. You can brag all you want after a game, but if you don’t go hard at all times and play each day like it might be your last game, you’re cheating the game. Showboating was frowned upon and isn’t how you play the game. My father was complementary toward me when I was playing, but if I wanted to blow my own horn, I better make sure that I had played my hardest or the concert would be interrupted and I’d be dialed down a few notches. Tough love? At the time when you’re a kid, you think so. But as you look back on it as you start to grow up a little, you realize there was a lesson in it. I never took a play off for the rest of my playing days as I got older. That’s what earns you the respect of your peers, teammates and opponents. That’s the way I would teach any son of mine to play the game, hard and with respect for the game. There is no other way.
The lessons that I’ve learned from watching my father in terms of how to be a good husband and how marriage is a two way street are lessons that will never be forgotten-- and now that I’m married I try to implement what I've learned from watching him all these years . The example that he has set for me is something I will take with me forever. Marriage is a partnership with each person contributing equally in the relationship and I don’t think you can find me two people that are better examples of that than my parents. Christ my parents always went food shopping together every week and I now do the same thing with my wife! Every week! Goddamn it…I’m like Rain Man except it’s “ready Michelle, time to go shopping, time to go shopping.” Ha…
Doing things the right way, was always a big thing with my father. There was a right way and a wrong way to do something. Now, looking back, his right way was in fact the right way. It’s funny because the little things that I’d find so annoying as a kid that he’d tell me to do, are now things that I find myself telling my youngest stepson, Mikey, to do. Either that or I’m talking to my wife and telling her I think the kids should do something “this way” not “that way.” Why? Because it’s “the right way to do things.” Where did I hear that before?
Thanks Dad. It’s amazing how many times you were right about things, when I would’ve sworn to Christ you were wrong. Happy Fathers Day! (oh and on some things I still think I was right, by the way… I said most times you were right)
Chuck Hanf
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Comment by aedaly10
And that is a GREAT picture.