Fathers in the Field

Fathers in the Field

By Ryan Eshoff

On the day we brought our daughter home from the hospital—August 7th—Orioles rookie Jackson Holliday hit a home run. Bobby Witt, star of the Royals, hit two.

Ordinarily, this Dodger fan would not have paid much mind to the happenings in Kansas City or Baltimore. But as my firstborn and I watched our first of many SportsCenters together, in a sleepy haze on our couch, my perspective changed. Paternalized. Pardon the pun, but these baseball highlights hit a little differently.

As a mid-thirties millennial, I’m at the point in my baseball fandom where the sons of players I watched growing up are entering, and starring, in the big leagues themselves. I played as and against Jackson’s dad Matt Holliday in MLB The Show.; I hit dingers off of Witt Sr. in imaginary childhood games in my hallway.

Fatherhood is omnipresent in baseball. Professional bloodlines are everywhere, but so are dads with their kids in the bleachers, reminders of the 32 MLB stadiums I’ve visited with my own dad.

While my wife and I didn’t plan to have our kid during the dog days of the 2024 season, I’m grateful we did—I’m grateful that these initial weeks of my daughter’s life will be spent with baseball in the background. She wakes up every 2-3 hours to make sure she doesn’t miss a meal; her dad wakes up every 2-3 innings to make sure he doesn’t miss a Shohei Ohtani at-bat.

I rely on baseball to get me through some of those early days; it is quite literally the soundtrack to our baby bonding time. Still, even the most quotidian of sports can’t always provide when Baby Girl demands parental alertness. Because this newly-minted dad wants to cling to summer and is suddenly sentimental about being a kid, in non-game hours we have turned to my favorite childhood baseball movies (children of the ‘90s were absolutely spoiled with kids sports movies, and my primary parenting conviction is that we pass these classics onto our progeny). Our lives tend to imitate our art, and I know that, beyond baseball, my childhood habits were inspired by the members of the Mighty Ducks, the Little Giants, and the Big Green. Retroactive apologies to my childhood golden retriever, who was decidedly NOT Air Bud, as much as I tried to train her as such.

These characters were pre-iPhone kids doing pre-TikTok things. As much as I feel my age, my season of life, when watching Jackson Holliday and Bobby Witt, Jr, and Cavan Biggio and Vlad Guerrero, Jr., I also come to appreciate the fictional kids I grew up with and the lessons in sport and life I learned alongside them. I want my daughter to know these kids too.

The inciting moment of Angels in the Outfield—before Christopher Lloyd, Danny Glover, Tony Danza, and Angels Stadium show up—is young Roger’s biological father showing up to his son’s foster home to inform him that they’ll only be a family again if the Angels win the pennant. Roger says a prayer (maybe one that Mike Trout should borrow), and cue the divine drama. Late-season Anaheim rally notwithstanding, the soul of this movie is Glover’s George Knox, manager of the team, having his curmudgeonly heart softened as he meets, befriends, and ultimately adopts Roger. Baseball, the film argues, teaches Knox to believe. To be a dad.

My newborn and I come to notice that that same thesis underlies the other baseball movies we watch. In Rookie of the Year, Little Leaguer-turned-Chicago Cub Henry Rowengartner navigates life as a professional ballplayer while being raised by a single mom. In the end, gruff veteran pitcher Chet Steadman falls in love with Henry’s mom and emerges as a father figure (and Little League coach). Baseball, the film argues, teaches Steadman to care for someone other than himself. To be a dad.

We watch The Sandlot, in which the ragtag group of young ballplayers attempt to reclaim the signed Babe Ruth baseball that Scotty Smalls “borrows” from his stepdad Bill. Beyond the pool days and the dog chases, the human tension in Sandlot is the burgeoning relationship between Scotty and Bill, with baseball at its centerpoint. Despite his frustrations with Scotty’s lack of talent or baseball acumen, Bill continues to grow into his paternal role. Baseball, the film argues, teaches him to be patient, to forgive. To be a dad.

Not until this summer did I realize that each of these films featured men needing baseball to teach them how to be fathers. I came of age in the ‘90s alongside Roger, Henry, and Scotty. Now in this new phase of life, I can’t help but feel that I’m doing the same thing again, only this time my attention is on Knox, Steadman, and Bill. Men with no plan or playbook, but who share a love of the game with the kids in their care.

I cannot wait to re-learn the game through my daughter’s eyes (and nose, and ears, and hands). Maybe I will re-traverse the country visiting the stadiums with her, as I did with my dad; maybe she will be as grateful to me as I am to him for using this sport as an excuse to see Detroit and Cincinnati and Tampa Bay, and all the other American cities that would be foreign to me otherwise. We can go on daddy-daughter dates to the four new parks constructed since my dad and I finished our tour (Texas, Atlanta, and New York x2). We will most certainly go to Chavez Ravine together, stuff our faces with food every hour, and Shohei will still be on his decade-long Dodger contract, and everything will feel full circle. I don’t care if I never get back.

What the man receives from his father he now aims to pass to his daughter, like a middle infielder taking the throw from center and turning to make the relay home. And as the infielder pivots, he realizes that this script has played out before. On a baseball diamond in Iowa, of all places, amidst the corn.

Field of Dreams is baseball cinema’s greatest tribute to fatherhood, and I decide to watch that one, too, with a napping newborn on my lap. There’s Ray, chasing the ghost of his own father (literally) while figuring out how to raise his own daughter – baseball is the bridge across those generations. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the field itself, and of interviewing author WP Kinsella, who wrote the book on which the film was based. Kinsella told me that what appealed to him about baseball—what made this of all sports the ideal context for human narratives—was the “open-endedness” of it; that is, at least pre-pitch clock, baseball lacks the rigidity of other sports. Kinsella proposes that we imagine the foul lines on a field diverging forever, in conjunction with the lack of any time limit or game clock.

Perhaps the beauty of baseball, then—and the art produced about it—is that it is confined to neither time nor space. I’m stuck on this idea, and—awake for a feeding in the middle of the night, or thinking about my daughter at the grocery store or gas station—I can’t help but think that fatherhood feels the same.

Ryan Eshoff is an educator, coach, and writer in the Bay Area. In his spare time he likes to go on long walks with his goldendoodle, troll Giants fans, and daydream about Christmas. 

Sam Williams is a cartoonist, comics publisher, and baseball enthusiast based in Bournemouth, UK.

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