This is the time of innocence in baseball. The time where all teams are contenders and every man in the major league camp has a chance, even if it ever so slight, to make the big league club. This is the time for wonderment at the whole spectacle and aura of the game and it brings back the memories of my childhood when innocence was there, too.

About this time every year we got out the leather gloves that had been in the bottom of the closet for six months. We eased the leather back into place by smacking the baseball into the sweet spot and squeezing the glove around it.

When our arms and hands were too tired to continue, we would lather it up with oil, tightly tie a shoestring around it, and sit it on the nightstand.

Then that magical day would come when it was warm enough to ask, "Hey Dad, you wanna play catch?" We would walk out to the street or in the back yard, make that first throw and start the learning process all over again, the one where we learned about how to hold the glove when you catch, the curve, and a proper pitching motion.

We played out the ritual that all boys and their dads do, or should be required to do.

I remember in some places where we lived, we had to search for a good place to play catch, preferably one with some type of backstop for when I inevitably uncorked a wild one. Funny, as I recall, we never failed to find a place acceptable to my Dad. We played in the middle of busy neighborhood streets, on the side of apartment buildings next to coal storage bins, and in the middle of a golf course (12th fairway). Dad had his first baseman's mitt that he had in high school and when I got older he used my catchers mitt on the wrong hand so that I could pitch to him.

He taught me a curve, slider, knuckler, and drop ball so well that I could use all three with pretty good consistency. He couldn't teach me power, though, and my pitching career ended in tenth grade due to, figuratively speaking, a bad case of whiplash. I moved permanently to catcher and he took as much pride in a strike to the second baseman as he did a strikeout.

He never told me I couldn't pitch, though. He just moved to the next phase and pitched to me while I caught.

I moved out after high school graduation. Actually they moved away, but that's a story for another time. I haven't played catch with him since. There just never seems to be enough time. We are as close now as we ever have been, but in a different way than back then. Not better, not worse, just different. During those wonderful six months of the year we still talk almost daily about the game for which he gave me a passion.

We both still follow the game. In fact, I got to return the gift he gave to me in 1978. Last year I took my dad to a major league baseball game... 22 years after he took me to my first.

Still every year during this time I see my glove in the garage and think of those times and how much it meant to me. Only recently was I reminded about what else my Dad was doing during those years. He was in the Army, working 9-10 hours per day and going to school at night. It is here, 15 years after the last time we played catch that he has taught me my most important lesson.

As I sit here with a five year old sleeping in a room down the hall and a wife who is expecting to give birth in 5 months, I have been reminded of one of my father's greatest gifts: I can not remember him ever saying no when I asked him to play catch. I am sure that he must have done it once or twice, but I can't remember them. In fact I can't remember my father ever not having time to be with me. I hope that I am equal to his task.