Woo: An ode to my baseball dad on Father's Day

New York Times

9 hours ago

It's 1996, and I am maybe six weeks old. That does not stop my parents and grandfather from taking me to a baseball game. It's a clear, cool May night in the Bay Area, and the Oakland A's are playing the Boston Red Sox at the Oakland Coliseum. This is my very first baseball game. Obviously, I don't remember it. However, my parents do, and when my dad tells the story, he recalls how I spent the entire game strapped to his chest, wide awake and mesmerized by the bright stadium lights.
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He also tells me how he munched on a bag of peanuts throughout the game, and how my mom was less than pleased to find her newborn daughter covered in peanut shells by the end of it. There would be countless more baseball games my dad would take me to growing up, most of them in San Francisco to watch the Giants play. But if we're designating an official starting point for this journey of ours, it would be this.
It's 2006, and my summer is spent either at the Vacaville, Calif., softball fields, my brother's Little League games, or our neighborhood park. My dad, Dave Woo, is a fixture at all three. He coaches both of our teams, works as a property manager, and spends whatever limited remaining free time he has throwing Wiffle balls for the rest of the kids in our cul-de-sac. My dad invented a game with our (very understanding) neighbors. If anyone can hit the house across the court, we can all go for ice cream. We made a lot of group trips to Baskin-Robbins that summer, and my dad paid for them every time.
I remember my brother and I waiting for our dad to come home from work each day that summer, bat bags packed and ready to go. When his white pickup truck rolled into view, we would scramble to the front yard and start loading up a wagon to take to the park: buckets of balls, L-screens, tees, you name it, we had it. We would hit for hours, the three of us (and occasionally our family dogs), until Mom called to say it was time to come home for dinner.
After dinner, we'd turn on the Giants game, and my dad would continue teaching me the rules and strategies of the game. He would quiz me on stats, when a team should pinch hit, what each player's strengths were, and what pitches to throw when. Neither of us knew it at the time, but he was laying the foundation of my childhood — and eventually, my future.
It's 2012, it's Halloween, and the Giants have just won their second World Series in three years (sorry about that National League Championship Series, Cardinals fans). My aunt, who works for the city of San Francisco at the time, has an office that oversees City Hall — the ending point of the World Series parade. In what was a very uncharacteristic decision, my parents let me skip school for the day to attend. My dad and I catch an early-morning BART train before the sun rises and arrive to find a sea of black and orange flooding Market Street. We make our way to the Civic Center and finally to City Hall, where we have a bird's-eye view of my childhood icons — Bruce Bochy, Buster Posey, Matt Cain, Hunter Pence, even Brandon Crawford (who I would go on to cover professionally, 12 years later).
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One of the confetti cannons is right above the balcony of my aunt's office. When the speeches conclude, it fires off and blasts my dad and me both. Tiny, fluttering pieces of orange, white and black paper remain in my hair the rest of the day. It was, simply put, the best day ever.
It's 2014, I'm about to graduate from high school, and I've chosen the college I'm going to attend — the University of Oregon. To celebrate, my dad makes good on a promise he made years ago. We had always talked about taking a father/daughter trip to Scottsdale to watch the Giants play some spring training games, and now is the time. So we fly to Arizona, rent a car, and drive aimlessly in search of a quick bite before checking out Scottsdale Stadium. We park the car at what we figure is a university, but we don't know which one. After about five minutes, we realize we're at Arizona State — and I'm enamored, to say the least. We spend three days watching exhibition baseball and exploring the area, and I realize this is exactly where I need to be. As we board our flight back home, I tell him I've changed my mind. I'm not going to Oregon, I say. I'm going to apply to be a Sun Devil.
Five months later, we are back in Arizona, moving into my dorm room in Tempe. On a whim, I enroll in Arizona State's sports journalism program. I wonder if I can make a career in baseball. My dad says he knows I can.
It's 2018, and I have a degree in sports journalism and communications. I've just wrapped up my post-grad internship — a summer as a fill-in reporter covering the San Diego Padres for MLB.com. I don't know what's next for me, or if the career I've imagined for myself is realistic. I want to be a baseball beat writer, I tell my dad. It's all I want to be. But my experience is limited, the opportunities are slim, and the pay as a freelancer is essentially nonexistent.
He reminds me continuously that it won't be easy and it's not going to come on my timeline, but he believes in me and knows I can do it. I spent the next three years bouncing between various sports media jobs, finishing runner-up for two separate beat writer positions, before eventually finding myself unemployed and working at my hometown mall. My faith is wavering. My dad's isn't.
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It's 2021, a new baseball season starts in three weeks, and The Athletic has just offered me a job as their St. Louis Cardinals beat writer. That time in my life was such a whirlwind, I hardly remember anything. And if I'm being honest, the first two months of my dream job didn't feel much like a dream at all. I'm 2,000 miles from home, living in a hotel, and don't know a soul in St. Louis. I call my mom and tell her I'm having serious doubts about whether I made the right decision. I don't know this at the time, but after I hang up, she finds my dad and tells him he needs to fly out to see me.
He arrives in Missouri a few days later. He helps me move into a new apartment and reinforces that I will not feel this overwhelmed or isolated for long. 'You just have to stick with it, Koko,' he says. He catches a Cardinals game before he leaves, and I meet him beforehand. We split a hot dog on the upper concourse. We only talk for a couple of minutes, but I'm reminded of how much I love being at the ballpark with my dad. It's a comforting feeling, and by the time the game ends, I know things will eventually going to be just fine.
It's 2025, and I'm in the midst of my fifth season covering the Cardinals. I don't get to watch many games in person with my dad anymore, but he's my first call most nights when I leave the yard. Our conversations now are pretty similar to the conversations we had when I was a kid, except I'm the one explaining game strategies now. My dad reads every story I write and watches almost every Cardinals game. Baseball remains our connecting point in so many different ways.
But that's what makes this sport unique, right? We don't fall in love with baseball simply because of the sport itself. We fall in love with it because of the people we share it with. How lucky am I to have been able to share this journey with you, Dad.
Happy Father's Day.
(Top photo of Dave and Katie Woo: Courtesy of the Woo family)