‘All the Important Things Happen at Home’

The eyes of the baseball world shifted Friday to the cozy, ivy-covered confines of Chicago’s Wrigley Field, which last hosted a World Series game in 1945. Virtually all of the 41,268 seats of the iconic ballpark were filled during the Friday night game, which the Indians ultimately won 1-0. They’ve now taken the lead in the series, 2-1.

Not many Chicagoans remember their team’s loss in Game Seven to the Detroit Tigers on Oct. 10, 1945. No one remembers their last win in 1908. Likewise, only seasoned fans of Cleveland’s Indians recall their last World Championship in 1948 against Boston’s Braves. As such, legions of perennially frustrated fans and families have been gathering in homes and bars this week, many spanning multiple generations — all hoping their team’s “curse” will finally be broken.

As we played catch, we talked about sports, but also about life.

I watched the game on Friday night with our three young boys. My father, who is 85 years old and now lives with us, also tuned in.

There is something nostalgic about family and baseball, a sport that tends to pull together the generations.

“Baseball is continuous like nothing else among American things,” wrote the poet Donald Hall. “An endless game of repeated summers, joining the long generations of all the fathers and all the sons.”

Related: The World Series Dilemma

My first memory of professional baseball is the 1977 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was just five years old. My father, who grew up in Brooklyn, bet me 25 cents the Dodgers would win. I was sent off to bed just as Game Six was getting underway. Tragically, I missed Reggie Jackson’s three consecutive home runs. When I woke up the next morning, a quarter had been taped to an index card on the fridge.

“Congratulations!” my father had written. “Your team has won a world championship! Love, Dad.”

I’m sure I spent the quarter on candy, but I wish I still had the card. As I write this, I can see my father’s baseball glove on my office bookshelf, its brown leather now dried and cracked. My own first glove rests beside it. Playing catch with my dad in our shaded Central Avenue yard on Long Island is one of my finest memories of childhood.

That’s because as we played catch, we talked about sports, of course — but also about life. He told me about what was important to him, about what he loved and how he had prayed for a son just like me.

Those conversations have stuck with me ever since, but they also stung a bit back in 2002, shortly after my wife Julie and I were married. After multiple miscarriages, I wondered if we’d ever have a son or daughter of our own. I wondered if I’d ever have a child with whom to watch baseball and talk about the things that mattered most in life.

Infertility is a growing challenge for many couples in the United States. In a recent government study, over 1.5 million women reported a sustained struggle to conceive a child. Surely many more suffer in silence.

Our prayers were answered three years later. Julianna was nineteen and looking to make an adoption plan for her soon-to-be-born son. She considered dozens of families and ultimately selected ours. She knew she could be a mom — but she knew she couldn’t also be a father, which she desperately wanted her son to have.

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When Riley was born, it was love at first sight. In the 11 years since his birth, we’ve had countless games of catch and visited numerous ballparks, including Yankee Stadium — though I had to sadly show him the spot where the original “House That Ruth Built” once stood.

As I enjoy the rest of the games during this fall 2016 classic, my thoughts will be with those families waiting with open, empty arms. But my thoughts will also be with the many children currently waiting for a mom and dad.

Outside the red brick walls of Wrigley Field, over 18,000 children are enrolled in the foster care program in the state of Illinois. Nearly 3,500 of them are immediately available for adoption. In Ohio, the need is almost equally great. There, approximately 13,000 children are in the foster care system, with more than 2,500 of them raring to find a forever home.

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To put these numbers in perspective, when you watch the game tonight, if you pulled all the children of Ohio and Illinois living outside their families together, you’d fill over 75 percent of Wrigley Field and over 85 percent of the Indians’ ballpark back in Cleveland.

Well over 400,000 children are in foster care across the U.S., with 100,000 currently available and waiting to be adopted. Might you be in a position to lend a hand and change a life forever? The need is great. Is now the time for you to make a decision that could someday change the world?

I spent this past summer compiling 16 adoption stories of some of the world’s most successful people — from former first lady Nancy Reagan and President Gerald Ford to baseball’s Babe Ruth, music legend Faith Hill, and former South African President Nelson Mandela. All of these individuals succeeded because someone believed in them and adopted them into their family.

Let’s enjoy the series, but not forget to look beyond the walls of the parks. After all, as somebody once said, in baseball, as in life, all the important things happen at home.

Paul J. Batura is vice president of communications at Focus on the Family. His book, “Chosen for Greatness: How Adoption Changes the World” (Regnery Faith), is published on Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. This article has been updated to reflect the results of Friday’s game.