It was middle of the fourth inning and the boy wanted to get up and walk, and I didn’t complain. I might have preferred to sit and watch the game, but hey - that he sat through 3 1/2 innings without complaing I’m bored or wanting to go hang out on around the play area was itself a milestone. Two years of Pony League baseball under his belt and the kid is actually becoming interested in the game. Strangely enough, so am I.

There was a time when I lived baseball. I could - and probably still can - tell you who won every home run title of the 1970s, both American and National leagues. I knew all the major league records, was an avid baseball card collector, and probably of the last generation of kids who went out and played baseball literally every single day during the summer. The pre-video game generation; there simply wasn’t too much else to do, so you played ball.

But as I got older I began to lose interest. Stopped collecting the cards around 1982, when I was 15. Cars and girls waited beyond the horizon; baseball cards and maybe baseball itself seemed, I don’t know, kids’ stuff. Plus, I was a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates; spent lots of summer evenings in the late ‘7os watching those classic games between the Stargell/Parker Pirates and the Schmidt/Luzinski Phillies. Hated the Phillies, in fact, mostly on the basis of those games.

But by the early/mid 1980s the Pirates were terrible, and then they were ground zero for the big baseball drug scandal. They were revived, as was my interest, in the early 1990s, with the pre-steroids Barry Bonds and Andy van Slyke; three NL championships but no World Series. Then they got terrible again, and I haven’t really paid any attention to Major League Baseball since.

That is, until this year. Again, the boy now has two seasons of first-level ball under his belt. And he’s pretty good, actually; hits really well. And even though the season’s now over, we spend most of our evenings in the backyard, playing catch. Just bought him a new glove Sunday afternoon, in fact. He’d like to pitch next year.

Playing catch is a really great way to bond with your child. So we’ve been spending more time together, just he and I, than we have since his sister was born. In addition to the play in the backyard, in the evenings we’ll turn on the TV just before he goes to bed, watch a few innings of the Phillies or the Orioles or whomever’s on. He’s getting to know the Phillies now - Chase Utley and Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino. So am I. And because he likes them, I’m becoming a Phillies fan myself. The mere thought was once sacrilege.

And while my son has reignited my interest in baseball, I’m also remembering why I liked the game so much. Each play, each pitch, can take some time. That’s one of the things I had started to dislike about the game; but now I find the deliberateness more forgivable. And I’m beginning to think it’s that deliberateness which once made the summer itself seem so drawn out. In these days when time seems to move faster, to sit for three and a half innings with your son, his new glove drawn, hoping for a foul ball hit your way, may seem like forever. And that’s a very good thing, indeed.