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Priscilla Van Valkenburgh

Paternal Apparition

I saw my father on TV yesterday in the box seats behind home plate at Fenway Park. When the camera focused on the batter I caught a glimpse of him. Of course he's been dead for fifteen years, but perhaps, just perhaps...

He was wearing a blue Red Sox shirt and a khaki fishing hat, and appeared to be about the age he was when I was in high school. The familiar slumping in his seat, the hat, the sort of melting lips he developed after a few beers...

I have no idea what team he rooted for after the trauma of the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn—probably the Mets. But he was an Irishman, so in this reincarnation it is not inconceivable that he chose to be a part of the Red Sox Nation.

world series—
watching with one eye open
the other closed