Words Just Can't Explain...

For anyone who reads this thing, here is what I couldn't read out-loud in class this morning. I could only get through the first few sentences before the sight of my father and grandfather together entered vividly into my mind. I was shocked at my reaction, all things considered. I feel as though it isn't fair that I receive full credit for the assignment because I didn't follow through with the reading, so here is the full shebang! So, here ya go, no tears, just my typed words:


I grew up playing sports.

My family rarely had “family dinners”, not because we didn’t love one another, but because the six children were always playing sports, going to after school camps and practices. It was instilled into me at a young age that winning is fun, and as my dad often puts it, “It is good to be king.”

I traveled throughout my childhood on a baseball team called Forest City Pallet, that ended up winning the Little League World Series in Jersey City, N.J., when I was 14. It was the best summer of my life. Not because of the wins (we went 85-7 that summer), but because it is the last time my grandfather and my father, together, saw me compete.

A little background for those unfamiliar with the Lotzer family tree: My father was a star athlete in high-school and college, playing for Rockford Boylan High and averaging 29 PPG over his three year varsity career and landing a full-ride to the University of Wisconsin. I don’t know exactly when he started drinking, but I remember it all too vividly the “chaos” that surrounded us during those times. He wasn’t violent, he was still a great person and he loved my family. He taught me everything I know about sports and I am grateful for that. He had a stroke this year and finally decided it was time to end the days of partying and find something deeper in life. I can see it in his eyes, the lost years, the lost opportunity, the lost promises.

My grandfather Ray was a great man. He was married to my grandmother Katherine for 68 years before he passed away in 2005 from a very difficult struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. He played minor league ball for the Cubs and Yankees during the Great Depression. He gave my brothers and I a scorecard from the 1932 Yankees World Series game played at Wrigley Field in which Babe Ruth “called his shot”. Talk about priceless. Grandpa never missed one of my games. He was one of my biggest fans and I remember the first time I looked into the crowd and didn’t see him standing up with a smile on his face, his glasses larger than life, his depleted Cubs hat hanging over his ears and my grandmother attached to his side as though it were 40 years earlier.

It was tough for my father to go through this. He had everything in life: His parents lived in the same home for 70 years, he had six loving brothers and sisters and now he had a family of his own to support and love. But when my grandfather died, his drinking escalated and our relationship became distant.

I remember in Little League, before my final game, my dad, grandfather and I went to grab a quick bite to eat and then head to the stadium for the game. I did not know or understand that this would be the last time that they would see their youngest child and grandchild play in a game. I wish I could go back in time.

To me, having those two men in the crowd for my games was something I never realized the importance of until right now, at this very moment, in this very classroom. I worshiped the ground that they walked on and I was proud. Not proud because of their athletic accomplishments, but proud because I was lucky enough to see them together. And honestly, before seven months ago, it was the happiest I had seen my father in years.

That is the proudest and happiest moment of my sporting life. Not the winning shots I have had, the game winning touchdown runs or passes or the game winning hits. But the moment I saw my role models, my father Mark and my grandfather Ray, together at a little league baseball game.