TCB's Father's Day stories: Rocking chairs magical at Skeeters game

I have an interesting baseball relationship with my father, perhaps very different from most kids. My dad is a big football guy and having grown up in Pittsburgh he's all about the Steelers. I'm the youngest and only girl in the family and maybe that's why I ended up falling in love with a different sport, maybe not.

But alas, in college I found that baseball just fit me. It was several years later that I drug my father down the baseball rabbit hole. He'd lived in Vero Beach, FL when the Dodgers called that their Spring Training home, so he watched some games and enjoyed them, but wasn't a "baseball fan" in the sense that I use that term.

When he and my mom moved back to Houston, they joined my daughter and I at countless games. It was me sharing knowledge and strategy with him at games, not vice versa. So my dad is not a wealth of baseball stats and info, but he loves to watch the game as much as I do at this point, even joining me on my annual trips to Spring Training.

I had never given him a baseball gift for Father's Day before although we've spent that day at Minute Maid Park together, drinking a cold beer or two and watching the Astros. But this year, he's getting tickets, but not to the Astros since we do that all the time.

I'm sending him down south a bit - to Sugarland - to see the Skeeters play independent baseball. He mentioned he hasn't seen a game there yet, and that's a shame. There's something about that ball field that makes watching a game there a bit magical.

Perhaps it's the rocking chairs.