Grand Slams and Great Dads: A Mets Father’s Day Tribute

I literally wrote the book on fathers and sons in baseball. No, really—I did. It’s called Glove Story: Fathers, Sons, and the American Pastime, and I had the pleasure of co-writing it with my longtime friend and fellow KinersKorner.com contributor A.J. Carter. It's a collection of essays, anecdotes, and the kind of misty-eyed, mustard-on-your-scorecard memories that only baseball can produce.

This site, of course, is named for Ralph Kiner—the man who taught me so much about baseball, and also taught generations of Mets fans how to describe a home run using words that didn’t exist in any known language. But as much as I admired Kiner, the man who truly taught me the game, who lit that first spark and kept it burning through rain delays and doubleheaders, was my father, Morris Rosenman.

So today, I’m not just writing as a sportswriter, a Mets loyalist since before Cleon Jones ever crouched into a batting stance, or a guy who still thinks there’s nothing more beautiful than a well-turned 6-4-3 double play. I’m writing as a son. A son who had a dad that made baseball not just a sport, but a soundtrack to childhood.

And I don’t want to be the only one telling stories today. I want this to be one of the most interactive pieces we’ve ever run here at Kiner’s Korner. I’m asking you, our readers—whether you’re a lifelong fan, a Little League coach, or someone who still thinks the infield fly rule is a government conspiracy—to share what your dad meant to your love of baseball. Did he teach you how to grip a curveball? Argue balls and strikes with the TV? Take you to Shea in the '70s with nothing but a transistor radio and a pocket full of Cracker Jack money? I want to hear it all.

Because while baseball is a game of stats, streaks, and occasional heartbreak (hello, 2007), it’s also a game of connection. And there’s no connection quite like the one between a father and a child when that first pitch is thrown.

Let’s celebrate that together.

My father, Morris Rosenman, was not a baseball player. At least not in the way we tend to picture them—grass stains on their knees, pine tar on their bat, bubble gum in their cheek. No, my dad was a football guy. Born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he was the kind of tough, scrappy kid who found his calling snapping footballs, not catching fly balls. He was the center for Seward Park High School’s undefeated football team—a badge of honor he wore with pride for the rest of his life.

He once told me he had an offer to play for the Chicago Bears. I never saw a contract, mind you, but he said it with such conviction that I believed it then and I believe it now. Besides, who was going to fact-check him? ESPN Classic didn’t exist yet. But just as that door creaked open, Uncle Sam came knocking with an even more pressing invitation—to fight in World War II. And just like that, football took a back seat to freedom. He went, he served, and he came back with stories he didn’t often tell, but with values he always lived by: loyalty, quiet strength, and a deep sense of purpose.

But even though he wore shoulder pads instead of batting gloves, baseball still pulsed through his veins. I know this because of a page in his high school autograph book—a relic I found years later, tucked between photos and newspaper clippings. Right there, in careful teenage script, he listed Mel Ott as his favorite athlete. Not Sid Luckman, not Bronko Nagurski—Mel Ott. The legendary outfielder of the New York Giants, whose “foot-in-the-bucket” swing was as unorthodox as it was unstoppable.

And because of that, I may very well have been the only seven-year-old in my neighborhood who knew what “foot in the bucket” meant. Other kids were collecting Topps cards or playing stickball in the street—I was busy perfecting a swing that looked like I was falling into a pothole. My dad explained Ott’s stance to me in the same tone most fathers used for teaching how to ride a bike or throw a spiral. Except instead of “keep your balance” or “follow through,” I got, “Step toward the pitcher like you're about to trip, and then launch it.”

He was 22 when he married my mom in August of 1945, still wearing a uniform and still overseas. She was 18. By 1946, my sister Cheryl was born. Then came Susan in 1951. And then—finally—in 1960, at the ripe old age of 37, he got the kid he could talk baseball with. Me. Sure, I had just arrived and could barely hold my own head up, much less argue about whether Gil Hodges was underrated—but I’d like to think that when the nurse walked into the waiting room and told him, “It’s a boy,” his first thought wasn’t diapers or college funds. It was: Finally—someone to watch the doubleheader with.

And he was right.

The orange‑and‑blue strand of my DNA can be traced to one specific afternoon: Friday, August 30, 1968. Officially, 34,423 people filed through Shea’s turnstiles that day, but in my memory the crowd consisted of exactly two—my father and me. Yes, Tom Seaver was on the mound, Art Shamsky launched a grand slam, and the Mets beat the Cardinals 8‑2—but the real hook came before we even hit the upper‑deck escalator.

Dad understood the spiritual power of stuff. Program and yearbook? Check. The stubby blue pencil with “New York Mets” etched in gold? Absolutely. At the souvenir booth he produced a Jerry Koosman pin and an autographed team ball like a magician yanking rabbits from a hat. By the first pitch I was tethered for life, and by the third inning—thanks to his crash course in score‑keeping—I could record a 6‑4‑3 double play with the flourish of a court stenographer. When Shamsky’s slam cleared the fence, I printed “GRAND SLAM!” in letters so big it looked like the Hindenburg headline. Dad watched me fill in that diamond and, if I know him, counted it right up there with weddings and graduations.

From that afternoon until 1988 we went to every postseason baseball game played in New York—Yankees included. (Yes, Mets fans, I’ve done time in the Bronx. My penance is recorded elsewhere.) And Dad possessed what I considered a Jedi‑level sense of when to leave early. Mid‑70s, weeknight, he’d turn to me in the sixth, mutter “This one’s over,” and whisk us out ahead of traffic. Only once did the Force fail him: October 14, 1976. Yankees vs. Royals, ALCS Game 5. We were halfway down the Cross Island Parkway when George Brett tied it. By the time Chambliss hit his shot, I was back home in Seaford, watching from the couch with my jaw on the floor, shaking my head, and realizing my dad’s legendary early-exit instincts had finally betrayed us. And no, it definitely wasn’t more historic on TV.

Ten years later that memory proved useful. Game 6, 1986 World Series, Sox up two runs, top of the tenth. Dad—now 63 and nursing a cranky heart—wanted out before Boston celebrated on our turf. I dug in like John Rambo: “Nothing is over! Nothing!” I played the Chambliss Card, he relented, and we stayed to ride the wildest roller‑coaster inning in Mets history. The look on his face when Ray Knight crossed home plate is burned into my internal highlight reel forever.

He packed a million other gifts into my fandom: yearly trips to Cooperstown; showing up at every one of my high‑school games despite city‑to‑suburb commutes that began at 4 a.m.; buying the complete Topps set the day it hit hobby shops; introducing me to his high‑school football teammate turned big‑league umpire Stan “Lumpy” Landes (and encouraging an 11‑year‑old me to bellow “LUMPY!” at a Mayor’s Trophy Game—peak childhood mischief). My one regret is that the three generations of Rosenman men never sat together at a ballpark. COVID gave us the paper‑cutout consolation prize: Dad, me, and my son Josh immortalized in corrugated cardboard behind home plate. Not perfect, but it’ll do until the great doubleheader in the sky.

AJ Carter and I had the privilege of diving deep into stories just like mine when we wrote Glove Story: Fathers, Sons and the American Pastime. We spoke with Major Leaguers who not only played the game but passed it down like a sacred family heirloom—dads who were their sons’ first catch partners, first hitting coaches, and lifelong role models.

But what we found went beyond baseball. It was about connection. About how the game bridges generations, whether you're in a big-league dugout or a backyard. And no moment captures that better than the simple, powerful line from Field of Dreams: “Hey Dad, you wanna have a catch?” It’s not just a scene—it’s a feeling every baseball-loving son and father knows deep down.

In Glove Story, we tried to bottle that feeling. Because while swings and scores fade, the bond formed through the game—that lasts forever.

We also heard from folks who didn’t play professionally but whose lives were shaped in the stands, not the dugout. People like Chazz Palminteri, Bob Costas, Howie Rose, and yes, former Vice President Dan Quayle—because whether you're calling balls and strikes or just yelling about them from the bleachers, baseball’s pull is the same.

But one story that’s always stuck with me came from writer and comedy legend Alan Zweibel. (You really need to buy the book to read his story about his first game—trust me, it’s worth the price of admission alone.) Still, it was this line that hit me right in the sweet spot of the heart:

“I’d go with my Dad, and when I got older I’d go with my friends. The impressions that I had looking around and seeing fathers and sons as a young boy, 11, 12, 13—I knew that I wanted to be a father. I knew that I wanted to someday bring my son to a baseball game.”

That’s the power of this game. It isn’t just passed down through DNA, it’s handed off like a well-worn glove or a treasured scorecard.

So now, I turn it over to you, our KinersKorner.com community:

What did your dad mean to your love of the game? What memories live rent-free in your heart and head when you think of baseball and your father? Share your stories in the comments below—we’d love this to be the most interactive post we’ve ever had on the Korner.

And finally, in the spirit of this day and in the voice of the man who taught us that broadcasting a game could be both poetry and punchline, I leave you with the immortal words of Ralph Kiner:

"On this special Father's Day, we'd like to wish all of you a very Happy Birthday."

Happy Father’s Day, everyone.