“Is this heaven?”

I’ve managed to come across on cable, the ending of the movie: “Field of Dreams” quite often, and frequently twice in the same day. I must have seen it at least 50 times, perhaps more than a hundred, and I’ve cried at the ending every time as I watch Ray say to his ghost father if he wants to have a catch. It’s a moment that drags me – usually willingly – into a crying jag often lasting for hours.

It’s as if the movie was made for me as much as the field was made for Ray. Perhaps when I go to heaven, I will find my father to have a game of catch once again and make amends and hope for restoration.

When I was very young, New York had three teams. My mother would live and die by Jackie Robertson and the boys of summer. Ebbets Field was just a subway ride away and we would get grandstand seats and watch the Dodgers play. I have no memory of it but I was told that I shook Robinson’s hand. He started his major league career the same year I was born and I suspect I was a year or two old when that happened. In those days, players would sign autographs and talk to you if you waited at the players’ entrance.

Dad was a Giant’s fan and if you remember the song “Talking Baseball,” I kind of drifted into the discussion of who was the best: Willie, Mickey or the Duke by the time I started school. Around the time I was five I declared myself to be a Yankees fan and I was taken to the stadium and watched Joe D in his last year and Mick as a rookie on the same field.

By the time I was in second grade, my life was turned upside down when my parents separated. I remember my mother taking me to see a double header in 1957 against the Kansas City (now Oakland) A’s. I know the Yankees won both games and some guy named Whitey Ford won one of them. But the highlight for me was when one batter hit a foul grounder along the first base line and the coach turned around, stuck his butt out and let the ball bounce off him. We were in the front row of the second deck and a ball was hit directly at me. I tried to grab it but it bounced off the fence with a clang that shook the seats we were in. I’ve gone to bed many nights thanking God that I didn’t catch the ball and break my hands.

After the game, we walked on the field and I went to the flagpole with the three monuments of Ruth, Gehrig, and Huggins.

Many years later, we went to opening day weekend when the Yankees opened their refurbished stadium. The year before, I took the ex to Shea Stadium where the Yankees played for a year. She hated it. “I hate to play games,” was her reason.

Dad would visit me every other weekend and we would frequently play a game of catch. I didn’t think much about it then, but I came to realize that dad was playing with only one functional arm. He wrecked his left arm while driving a taxi during the Depression. It was locked into place in front of his chest by doctors who had little choice if they wanted to save the arm. He had the guts to stand in there as I threw every ball as hard as I could. He frequently stopped the ball with his chest and I ragged him about not being able to handle my fastball.

In the movie, Ray sees his father as a strong young man rather than his memories of an older man who life had drained him of his strength. I too had never seen Dad like that and the tears start to shed about that time in the movie.

Earlier in the movie, Ray talks about how he and his father separated for a while and his dad had died before he was able to renew a relationship. It was the same way with me as I was in the Army and found out he was dying. I went home on a couple of weekends and met a man who was unable to recognize me. He was just too senile. I took a 30-day leave and he died during that time. I knew enough about his life that I asked the pastor of the local Unitarian church where he attended to conduct a graveside service.

I never got to tell him the things I needed to. I was more fortunate to have done so with my mother and got something of a healing about our relationship.

Baseball has always remained a part of my life in one way or another. I took my oldest son, John, to a couple of Mets games at Shea as part of a Royal Rangers Trip. And we visited the Baseball Hall of Fame together. We even had a few games of catch. But John just wasn’t interested in playing the game. And the other son, Matt, professed a hatred for the game.

 Once, I managed to get some tickets from my company to their corporate box seat. I took my friend, Bill, and his girlfriend to the game and by coincidence, it was Mantle's last game as he announced his retirement the day before.

But even after the boys grew up, I continued to go to Yankee Stadium a few times until Yogi was fired by Steinbrenner early into the season. While I rooted for them via Television and radio, I refused to go back to the Stadium until Yogi did.

I didn’t see another game until the year the ex and I separated. I had headed to Florida in an effort to figure out what the hell went wrong in my life. By the time I got there, she had already filed for a divorce. But I went to Legends Field (now Steinbrenner Field) and watched some spring training games. At one game, I received a replica ring of the World Series between the Yankees and the Mets.

I also got to go to a ticker tape parade the last time the Yankees won the Series. Though I barely saw the players, it was a very exciting day for me. I had always wanted to go to this unique piece of New York City culture. I thought of how much my father spoke of the parade they had for Charles Lindbergh, the massive parade at the end of the Second World War and when the early astronauts were honored.

My father has almost always been on my mind. At he end of the 2016 season, The Yankees had a bobblehead night for Roger Maris, my boyhood idol. I had to get one so I went to the new Yankee Stadium. There were only four games left in the season and the team was playing its rookies. I sat in the right field bleachers where I always watched Maris in that magical 1961 season. I saw a kid named Gary Sanchez hit one to the back of the second deck. My dad couldn’t figure out why I wanted to be in the 75¢ bleachers when we could have been sitting in the $4 grandstand seats. But I wanted to be near Roger. One day, he hit two home runs into the area near me, but it was too far away for me to try and catch the ball. But this time, I was prepared and brought a new catchers mitt that my aunt bought for me the previous day. Then Mantle hit a monster home run into right field. It was still climbing when it bounced off the wall behind the top deck in right field. If it had gone about 20 feet to the left, it would have been the only ball ever hit out of Yankee Stadium.

My companion, Emily, who was my senior prom date back in 1966, had never been to a major league game despite living in the shadows of the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, Shea and City Field. So we went to a game last August. I watched this senior woman responded like a kid as I did way back then. Suddenly, she was watching every game on television, abandoning Judge Judy, Dr. Oz and similar programs until after the season ended. With pitchers and catchers reporting next week, I’m sure she’s going to plan a few visits with her grandchildren at the ballpark.

But going back to the reason I sob every time I see the movie, I have to ask myself if God is so infinite, he would design an afterlife for me that included my young, sober and youthful parents and my ex where I could play catch with my dad and somehow say the things I need to say to them.

Even if it’s in Iowa instead of Heaven.