I can’t quite put my finger on why, but the tone of it made me slightly uncomfortable. I feel like it’s somewhat maudlin – not that the roots of the story and the emotions aren’t real, it just comes across a little pretentious in the sense that there’s a bit of a put-on at work, not the artsy-fartsy sense. [12] goes a way toward explaining this, or at least it does in theory. Something about being self-conscious or embarrassed to share I think discolored the execution. I get the sense that in this piece somehow you held back and laid it on a bit thick, if that’s possible.

Maybe this a Thumper moment and if so, I apologize.

I heard a story the other day about a father who had his two-year-old ripped from his arms by flood waters over in Georgia. Listening to the father describe the tragedy was heartbreaking… It made me think about how we sometimes take the time we have with our kids for granted and how we should enjoy every moment (even those times when they drive us crazy).

Must have shaved at least a year off my life. Would that were the only such moment of terror.

Parenthood.

I swear Kennedy was working through this stuff last night. He comes all the way back. It’s the fantasy. And he’s making crafty pitches, except, they’re all balls!. He gets it straight and throws some strikes. Looks like a million dollars for the second out. Then the next batter, makes two nice pitches. Close but both balls. This ain’t the minor leagues, Jack!. Then hits the up and outside corner with a regular fastball, the Angel lifts a lazy fly ball to left. Inning over. Not so special. Not so hard though either. POP! PFFFFT!

My psycho-babble take on the sickening feeling is this: You’ve got this hero fantasy. Then you do the right thing, the heroic thing, and you help avert an accident. Then what? Where’s the Daily News, right? POP! There goes that fantasy. Shit the Dad didn’t even thank you and the kid might hate you! And Pfffttt goes your equilibrium as you once again grow out of childhood fantasies and into adult reality.

It’s so cool of you to post this kind of story. I bet you a bzillion dollars that ball players go through this kind of thing all the time. I wonder who they tell their stories to?

I would hope someone would alert ME if the situation presented itself.

Patrick

Now they’re teenagers — not only wiser, but way too cool to greet me that way. But now my own daughter is four. And the sweats return.

So I’ll join the chorus of prematurely greying parents: Alex, no matter what you shouted, it was the right thing. Your apology was a normal impulse but an unnecessary gesture. And I’d like to think the father was not rude, but shell-shocked. I’d be curious to hear what happens the next time you cross paths.

[4] & [6] Put me in the terrified parent column as well. Last summer my son (who was four at the time) was riding his bike on a gravel road at the campground. There is not much traffic and the cars do a good job of watching out for kids on their bikes, but since I’m overprotective, I was following along behind him just in case. I had told him that if I yelled stop that he must stop immediately. Well, sure enough, when he go to an intersection and I yelled stop…he didn’t. There was a truck coming (going very slow, but I was not sure if they saw him). I broke into a full spring that would make Brett Gardner look like Jose Molina. When I got to him I just grabbed him off the bike and hugged him thinking of what could have happened. I was furious and scared, but that was overcome by my relief that everything was okay. As the truck drove by, the lady on the passenger’s side rolled down the window and said: “Good job, dad” (I guess her first thought was that I was going to yell at him for not stopping). I knew there would be time for discipline later (parking the bike for the rest of the day and a stern warning about what can happen when you don’t listen to dad got the message across nicely, he has stopped perfectly ever since). At the time all I could think about was how quickly things can happen…even when you are right there.