The first night after Edan was born, I barely slept. There was a small bench in the hospital room, and I laid there, wide awake in the dark, with my tiny little girl resting quietly on my chest. As I watched her breathing, I thought as far ahead as I could imagine. Her first word. Her first steps. Her first real laugh.

In the morning, when life came back into focus, I realized I'd probably miss them all. And for the first time since Edan's newborn hand latched onto mine, I didn't feel like a father.

So this past weekend, as she sat next to me, wide-eyed and excited before the very first pitch of her very first baseball game, I saw every image like it was in slow motion, knowing I'd remember it for the rest of my life.

* * *

As a kid, I was involved in (and obsessed with) anything sports-related. But the game that I really understood -- as if I was somehow made of the dirt on which it's played -- is baseball.

I collected cards, worshiped players, and more or less memorized Field of Dreams. Plus, even though I lived in Cleveland, our cable came with local stations out of Chicago and Atlanta, so there was literally always a game on TV. I subsequently became a dedicated fan of the Cubs and the Braves, after watching entire seasons after school and all day during the summer.

And I never stopped pestering my dad for a game of catch. He'd come home from work, exhausted, and I'd plead with him 'till I was blue in the face -- seemingly desperate for the rhythmic smack, smack the baseball made as it landed in our dusty leather gloves. I can't remember a single time he said no.

But nothing beat going to the ballpark. At the time, Cleveland had a terrible team, and Municipal Stadium -- which could seat up to 80,000 people -- was routinely empty, except for 7 or 8 thousand die hard baseball fanatics who couldn't resist the smell of old peanut shells and freshly cut grass. Because we could, everyone bought cheap seats in the nosebleeds behind right field, and moved up close after the first couple innings -- 10 or 20 yards away from real baseball players. It was in this borrowed seating that I'd catch my one and only foul ball, my dad's hands wrapped tight around mine, damned if he was going to let it get away.

* * *

These days I don't follow baseball like I used to. I'm almost never free to sit and watch it on TV, I couldn't name more than a handful of players, and they don't have fast-pitch for guys my age who aren't trying to go pro.

Regardless, every time I'm at a game -- whether it's at a major league park, or the stadium north of town where our local minor league team plays its home games -- the feeling is exactly the same.

Of course this is all beyond Edan. She watched the first inning, and put up with me chattering in her ear in between every pitch: "the man on the hill in the white shirt is going to throw the ball as hard as he can, and the man in the black shirt with the bat is going to try and hit it!" Each time the pitcher wound up, I tried to instill in Edan the tension, and the excitement that rides on every pitch: "Ooooooh! He's gonna throw it! Do you think the man with the bat will hit it?" And every time she'd say "yes!" Probably because that's what she thought I wanted to hear.

Then she got bored, starting squirming, and became more interested in the complimentary plastic bat we'd been given upon arriving (which posed a significant danger to the family in front of us).

But I didn't care. This time it wasn't about the teams, or the score. It was about sharing a game, for the first time, the way that fathers do.