the game always the same no matter how much the men who love it change, a simplicity that waits day after day, beautiful and addictive. - Wright Thompson

I brought along a bottle of 1978 Old Fitzgerald and we drank it the whole way down. That's how we acknowledged the ghosts who'd be at the game with us. That's how we toasted them while we flew.

Meeting Julian and making him talk about his family made me ask myself the same question I'd been asking him: What did I owe my late father? What did I owe a grandfather I never met? What is demanded of a son or daughter? What was demanded of me?

never feel jealous of other people’s success, and to try to see the best in people and to have empathy for whatever might be causing or fueling their worst behaviors.