There comes a time in every boy’s life when he discovers that his beloved father is, in fact, NOT the flawlessly omnipotent end-all-be-all of creation. Unfortunately, there also comes a time at which every father realizes that his beloved son has made such a discovery… and man, oh man, does it hurt.
For the past twelve years (pre-marriage, pre-kids), I’ve been playing Fantasy Baseball with my college buddies; and during those twelve years, I have made the playoffs an astonishing nine times!
NINE!
None of my friends have even come close to that number (a fact I remind them of often). Yet in spite of those nine chances, I have never once managed to actually win the league championship (a fact they remind me of even more often).
Enter Alex: my 7-almost-8-year-old son who already knows enough about baseball to win any handful of sports bar trivia contests. These past two years he’s helped me manage my Fantasy team. He drafts players, makes roster moves and gives me a daily update as to how we’re doing. (We’re currently in 10th Place
A few weeks ago I noticed that little Alex had proposed trading away Albert Pujols (i.e. the best consensus player in baseball) in exchange for Mark Texeira. I immediately canceled the trade and taught Alex an important life lesson: patience. “Pujols is off to a slow start,” I said. “But baseball is a lonnnng season.” So he shot me that “Father Knows Best” look I oh-so-treasure, and he went on his way.
Sunday morning – Father’s Day, no less - Alex brought me the sports page of our local paper and said: “Dad, we have a problem.” I went on to read how a ball nailed Albert Pujols on the wrist, causing damage severe enough to knock him out of commission for at least eight weeks - maybe more.
My heart sank.
“Maybe we should have traded him,” I mumbled half to myself, half to Alex… and that’s when he said it:
“Geez Dad - now I know why you’ve never won a championship.”
My wife laughed. So did Alex. And so did I… because, after all, it was funny. Not mean, not insulting – but funny. So much so that I even shared it with my Fantasy Baseball guys, who will assuredly relish in using my own son’s words against me for years to come.
Now I wholly admit that in the great scheme of life, these silly little fantasy sports games are not that big of a deal (as evidenced by my ability to still walk, talk and breathe despite my zero championships). But my take-away from this particular exchange managed to run quite deep. It was the first of many many many occasions my son will see me as imperfectly mortal; a truth that I know from my own experience as a son, will only get tougher and tougher to face as time goes on.
In the meantime, though, I still have four other kids who totally think I’m from Krypton…
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