A few years back my father passed away.  Late in his life he and my mother would watch the Phillies together.  Growing up I never knew them to care about baseball at all.  We played baseball, and my dad coached little league, but that was the extent that baseball made it to our football home.  I remember thinking that it was so endearing that both my mother and father came to enjoying this age old sport, together, so late in life.  When my dad passed I remember thinking how sad baseball might be for my mother.  Baseball was on my mind that first summer after my father was gone.  I remember loving the Mike Schmidt days of the Phils, and so this was like coming home for me.  I started paying attention to baseball intently, watching games with my mother, making small talk about the Phillies with her.   A couple years after my dad passed I took my mom to her first big league ball game.  We sat behind home plate, I bought her a little stuffed Phanatic, and we watched baseball all day.  It was a cloudy day, so the red of the players’ caps popped off the diagonal strokes of green outfield in such precise compliment that it read like a color theory project in art school.  Philadelphia was perfect to me that day, a perfect fit in a little empty space.  So here’s something for an empty space in Philadelphia, filled with a memory of baseball, and family, and this city.