For parents, sons, daughters and all generations, baseball still matters: Bill Livingston

For parents, sons, daughters and all generations, baseball still matters: Bill Livingston
By Bill Livingston, The Plain Dealer
December 19, 2009, 8:29PM

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- My Aunt Wilma was the youngest of eight children who grew up in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, while my father was the oldest. They were still the closest of them all.
She and my dad were drawn together by a love of reading, usually from the Collier's, Life and Saturday Evening Post magazines that surrounded them, and by baseball, to which each gave a lifetime of devotion.
My dad was a St. Louis Cardinals fan, born and died one. They were the team of the entire Southwest because of the reach of KMOX on the AM radio dial in the years before baseball expansion.
My aunt had no interest in the first major-league Texas team, the Houston Colt .45s, who soon were re-named the Astros. But the Texas Rangers were different. They were her team from the moment the old Washington Senators plopped down within easy driving distance of her until she died last month at the age of 86.
This will be my first Christmas without her. The stock of wisdom and laughter in the world went down when she left it.
I was able to spend an afternoon with her this summer in Texas, when she was in an assisted-living facility. She could still get around in her small apartment, and she had a TV set there. I am sure she had the Rangers schedule close at hand. Long after she was widowed, she passed her nights in the company of Nolan Ryan's fastball, which could bring the heat like the sweat-popping, eye-glazing 100-degree Dallas nights outside.
She rooted for the Indians when they reached the World Series in 1995 and 1997. She said it was because she had family here, but I also think it was because she could relate to the exquisite frustration of excellence that went unrewarded. She had seen Ryan and the young, still-precocious Alex Rodriguez toil valiantly in lost causes night after night.
She and her daughter Sissy visited Canton to see the Pro Football Hall of Fame several years ago. I made sure to set up a trip to Jacobs Field, too. The Tribe was out of town, but Aunt Wilma remembered how my dad would schedule his vacation so he could watch the daytime World Series games on television. Seeing the place where a World Series was played, in person, seemed to be her own field of dreams.
We started at the Bob Feller statue, in which Feller is rearing back to throw the hard one. His leg is just beginning its high kick. He knew how far his fastball might take him, and he was anxious to get started on the journey. Every Depression kid could relate to that leggy, hungry drive for success.
An RBI League (the initials stand for Returning Baseball to the Inner City) game was going on at the park. That was ironic. In earlier generations, more people followed baseball than the other sports combined. Every sportswriter can tell you he gets more mail from female readers about baseball than anything else. It used to transcend age, place and gender.
We took photographs of each other in the press box and stared out at the beautiful ballpark. Then we "borrowed" some paper napkins with Chief Wahoo's face on them, which she kept as souvenirs.
Richard Jacobs, the man who gave the park its name, is gone now, and so is his name on the building, and so is my aunt. After she died, I contacted the Indians staff and thanked them for their kindness years ago. Tribe communications director Curtis Danburg replied, "Sometimes we take for granted the impact this place and the game of baseball has on people."
He got that right.
My aunt kept saying, "I can't believe I'm in Jacobs Field, where they played the World Series!" Then, her hands would flutter up, and she would clasp them over her heart.