I often think of my father — and my father figures — on a baseball field.
It’s where Dad cheered me on as I sprinted around the diamond. It’s where my stepdad, Ty, recorded Mom and I having a catch or mashing softballs into an empty centerfield.
Citizens Bank Park is where my dad took me to see my first baseball game. It’s what turned me into a Phillies fan.
At one game, a few seasons after the Phillies’ World Series win in 2008, the Phanatic trotted up and down the stands with his inflatable clapper sticks, bonking fans on the head. The green furry creature soon spotted my father, who sat next to Mom and me. In a blink, I heard sounds of soft bopping — and one angry man.
The Phanatic tilted his head back and patted his stomach, miming laughter. My father did not crack a smile. His face burned as red as the baseball cap on his head.
Six-year-old me found this hilarious. As I got older, the memory fell a shade darker. Dad always broke into frequent tantrums. The smallest issue had him slamming cabinets and screaming at Mom. Even a fun-loving mascot ticked him off.
I was ten years old when Mom finally left him. Three years later, he left me. We rarely call, let alone text. We don’t see each other anymore.
Two weeks ago on my birthday, I dragged my mom and stepdad to a Phillies game. While hoops always interested Ty more, he started paying attention to baseball because of me. He sports gray pinstripes instead of red. Despite our baseball team disputes, we now argue for the love of the sport.
My father disciplined me as a child, but my stepdad taught me self-discipline in my adult years. Ty showed resolve in his own practices. He stayed after my father took off. He encouraged me to weightlift, to read more. To exercise the body and the mind, even at my lowest.
Ty has been a father figure. He’s been my dad.
I do cherish the family I am bound to by blood. I often visit Mom’s side in Las Vegas to tap into my Filipino roots: Spooning instant coffee into hot water for my great aunt as I listen to stories about our lineage. Indulging in Filipino food like chicken adobo and halo halo — ube ice cream with shaved ice and colorful jellies — my mother’s favorite dessert.
I also have no idea where I’d be without the family I found along the way. That includes my stepdad, my professors and my best friend of 16 years.
I met Professor Forrest at community college, just after the world creaked open in the aftermath of COVID-19. He stood on desks. He remembered slices of our lives, seemingly small details he’d bring up in office hours.
Forrest taught subject matter to his students the way a maestro might conduct his orchestra — with fervor and care. In that way, to many of us in the communication program, he became a mentor and a father figure. Four years later and I still keep in contact with him, chatting about life or how the Phillies almost gave us a heart attack.
While I don’t have any siblings, my best friend, Zoe, has been my sister since first grade. She’s also Filipino, so whenever her dad makes fried lumpia or pancit — egg rolls and noodles — I join her family at the dinner table. We pick up the phone at 5 a.m. We listen. We laugh and mourn the nostalgia of childhood and gossip about the boys we knew in college.
In my 23 years of life, I’ve grown to appreciate these relationships — the ones built through earned trust, respect and love. “Blood is thicker than water,” they say. Except, the full phrase is allegedly, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”
Chosen relationships can be stronger than blood ties because we have given ourselves the authority to make that choice. Found connections can empower us, especially those of us who escaped the broken-home narrative. I know my stepdad did. I know I did.
My stepdad did not have his biological father either. He knows how I feel about my own dad, and because of that, we are able to appreciate and see each other as a real family, blood ties or not.
At the end of the day, I always come back to baseball. I think of my father and father figures, and other people in my made family. I think of how the rules of the sport never change. But the wonderful thing is that every game has a different result, and that is how we should look at life.
We can find our people in an imperfect world. We can make the best of the cards dealt to us, even when the hand looks like a sure loss. In reality, the hand can be reshuffled, and we can look at our situation differently. Life is beautiful in that way. The flaws of our blood ties allow us to find those who also never had a father, a daughter, or a sister.
We just keep playing ball — sometimes with your biological parents, and sometimes with those who come into your life in a later inning.
Chloe is a multimedia editor and journalism major at Boston University, where she is Editor at The Daily Free Press. She will be graduating Spring ’25. Connect with her on LinkedIn @chloecramutola
