Tom @ 70

Yesterday was my brother Tom's birthday. He would have turned 70 and we would have shared that Irish Twin thing of being the same age for a couple of months. I was thinking about him all day and especially while watching that awesome Phillies game last night. Becky was watching a baking show in the living room and I was sitting at the kitchen table with the game on my laptop. I felt like he was in the room with me talking about the game. I had to open two beers.

Tom was a very intense baseball fan from a very early age. Our grandmother's brother Uncle Tom began taking us down by trolley to Connie Mack Stadium in 1961. Tom became obsessive about filling out the box score sheets as the game progressed. I liked eating hot dogs and watching the crowd. We liked to sit in the outfield and watch Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Richie Allen, etc. In our early teens Tom and I would take the trolley and go to games by ourselves. I think the last time we did that was in 1968. Later we went to some games together at the Vet.

Last night as the Phils came back to whoop the Padres again I was thinking about Tom's fantasy baseball game that he developed back in the early 1960's that we played incessantly for several years. I previously wrote about Tom's Baseball Game here. The teams were made up of real players but were Philly neighborhood teams like Germantown vs Tioga, Port Richmond vs Oak Lane, etc. It was a lot of fun. The plays were made with dice and we kept track of the games and the standings in one of those black and white school notebooks. Each game took about 20 minutes. We played the game up in our room and I can still see our brother Dan, who was in our room too, standing in his crib watching us roll the dice.

I'm sure Tom is somewhere enjoying this baseball season and the Phillies run in the playoffs.