8 For The Love Of A Game (1/2)

After Malcolm stormed out of the room, Artie decided to change the subject and try to salvage what was left of what could be his only Christmas dinner for quite some time. He turned to Dick first, eager to use a favorite subject both he and his eldest child liked to use to break the ice.

”That was quite a season you had this year, slugger.” Artie said with pride, ”You made the forty-forty club; that is not an easy feat. I cannot begin to tell you how proud I was of the effort you and team made in the playoffs. A tough ending but you guys put your all into it.”

”Thanks Dad,” Dick said as he something seemed to be festering inside him much like it had with Malcolm. ”When was the last time you saw me play?”

”Excuse me?” Artie asked, surprised by the grilling.

”Really, Dick?” Kim said as she tossed her fork down. ”Is fighting the only thing we're going to do tonight?”

”It's all right Kimmy,” Artie said as he held up a hand to wave her off. ”He clearly has something he wants to get off his chest; let him.”

”I can count on one hand how many games you saw as I was growing up.” Dick said as he seemed hurt by it, ”It seemed like you didn't have time to take part in something that was really special.”

”Tell me Richard,” Artie started as he also put down his fork, ”How did you play the few times I did show up?”

Dick paused for a moment. ”I can't remember.”

”That's bullshit.” David said from across the table. ”Those were some of the most awful games you ever played. I think you struck out four times during one of them.”

”He did.” Artie confirmed, ”For some reason, if you knew I was there you played terribly. I felt like a bad penny, holding you back from what you could be.”

”So you stopped going,” Dick said as he didn't seem to understand the logic, ”Does that seem reasonable to you?”

”I never stopped going.” Artie corrected him, ”I just stopped telling you that I was there.”

”What?” Dick said as he wasn't ready to hear that. ”You were there? When?”

”How about I answer your first question,” Artie said as he got up out of his chair and walked over to the cabinet that held the fine china. He took out a small box and walked back to the table with it. When he opened it up, there were a lot of small pieces of paper inside it. But Dick could tell immediately that they were not just regular pieces of paper. They were tickets; a lot of tickets to baseball games.

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David looked at it from his side of the table, ”How many tickets is that?”

”At least fifty,” the old man said as he filed through them and finally pulled out a ticket stub that had the logo to Dick's team on it. ”Here we go, July 4th of this year. You guys whopped the Athletics by a dozen runs. You hit three homers that day. Funny thing about that game was on TV there was a delay after Dick hit his third homerun. The fans assumed it was because Dick got a long standing ovation but it wasn't. There was a streaker that was pretty fast, it took security a few minutes to catch him. But because Dick was still waving his hat around, they assumed the delay was because of the applause.”