At a minimum, we hustled home to catch the last few innings ... Koufax vs. Ford, Gibson vs. McClain or Lolich. At a time when there was no ESPN, Internet or video games. Kids and fans of all ages were connected to the games through the study of box scores and the lively and descriptive chatter of the radio play-by-play man. With the World Series on TV, we could see the game we love and watch the mighty wage battle on baseball’s biggest stage.

I love baseball because it connects likes no other sport. It connects me with the deep and romantic history of the game and it’s rich record book and the characters who still define the roots of America’s greatest game. You won’t see Ken Burns doing 15-hour documentaries on any other sports because they can’t match baseball for the enduring images of a game that inspired so many people over many generations.

My Dad introduced me to the simple pleasure of listening to the Cincinnati Reds on the radio. Later, as teenager in the early 1970s, many summer evenings would end with me driving home from hanging out with my friends, listening to the Reds on the AM station, if only catching the wrap-up show and hearing Joe Nuxhall sign-off by saying “and now the old left-hander is rounding third and heading for home.”

My Dad was the third generation to listen to the Reds on the radio on our family farm. He wrote of crying when he saw the disfigured finger on his grandfather’s hand at his wake, an injury suffered during a baseball game on the farm that drew farmhands from all around. They would play when there was a lull in the farm work when the hay was in the barn and the corn and tobacco was not yet ready for harvest.

Now, baseball connects me to my kids. We have visited 23 major league baseball parks to date. I was gratified when my 20-year old daughter, Meredith, recently asked about possibly putting together a trip to the Midwest next summer to take in the Cardinals and the Royals and to add two more ballparks to our list.

I know the day will come when my grown children will invite me to take in a ballgame with them, possibly a trip to a new Major League ballpark. With baseball, tradition is served in large helpings. The look and the feel of the game have been refined but it is still played the same. The perfection of 90-foot base paths that yield bang-bang plays at first base, and of the pitcher’s mound 60 feet, six inches from home plate that yields the perfect distance between pitcher and batter to determine who is the victor in a split second makes me wonder if this game was divinely engineered well more than 100 years ago.

Many uniforms are still basically the same, just with better fabrics. The Yankees, Dodgers, Braves, Giants, Red Sox, etc., still cling to the look of teams long ago as they know it is an important link that connects the generations.

I have been involved in youth baseball for many years and my son, William, is just now embarking on his college baseball career. I know there are many parents who have watched their sons develop as young ballplayers, or may have been a coach at one time, who have many wonderful memories that connect them to diamonds and players near and far.

I sure do. But mostly, I love baseball because it loves me back.