My boy Coleman played a lot of baseball growing up. After Little League season was over, he would be invited to play in Allstar invitationals. An enduring vision I have of those years is leaving the office for lunch one summer day and passing a 10-year-old Coleman riding his bike to practice. It is a Norman Rockwell image. Coleman had his glove on the end of his bat which was slung over his shoulder wearing his worn out Cal Ripkin, # 8 T-shirt. The legacy of this impression fills my heart with love for my son and my country. Baseball and fatherhood. Nothing better. Yay America!
Coleman was invited to play baseball in Japan, and a Japanese team came to Richmond. You will never meet a cuter kid than 9-year-old Yuta who stayed with my family for 3 weeks one summer. To this day, my family absolutely loves Yuta. On the first night Yuta stayed with us, my wife and I, 3 children and Yuta watched the Bad News Bears. You may remember this movie with Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal. The children were ugly and rude and frankly used language that merited washing their mouths out with soap (a punishment that my mother administered to me on a regular basis). Yuta had a mind like a sponge. When the boorish children in the movie made a mistake or faux pas and uttered “Oh Sh#t,” Yuta picked up a new English phrase. He used it liberally throughout his stay with us to everyone he met. It was his favorite saying! For fear of hurting his feelings, we never corrected him. Admittedly, we also didn’t correct him because it was so damn funny. Yuta’s mom was an English teacher in Japan. My wife and I were horrified at what she must have thought of these trashy Smiths from Virginia the first time Yuta said “Oh Sh#t” to his Mom.
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