'COVERING HOME' Author: Fathering is like baseball

A new book uses many baseball analogies to teach its lessons.
By SAMANTHA CRITCHELL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- As a father, Jack Petrash has his bases covered. He says the most important thing about being a parent is to spend quality time with one's family because that's how cherished memories are made.
If that special time together just happens to be spent at the ballpark, watching a New York Yankee or a Baltimore Oriole make an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime play, well, that's even better.
Lucky for Petrash, a former teacher at a Waldorf, Md., elementary school, his family is full of baseball fans, which led him to write a book about fatherhood from a stadium-seat point of view.
"Covering Home: Lessons on the Art of Fathering From the Game of Baseball" (Robins Lane Press) wasn't originally intended as a baseball book, he says, but it's natural to want to teach what you love.
"You could write a book about good parenting in context of basketball, you know, talk about zone defense versus one-on-one, but what I know best is my family and baseball," says Petrash, now a parent educator for the nonprofit Nova Institute.
A cosmic link
Petrash seems to have an almost cosmic link to the national pastime.
He grew up in New York City during the 1950s as a Yankees fan. As a child, he attended religious classes twice a week and by far the coolest nun boasted a professional baseball player (Milwaukee Braves) as a brother.
The nun rarely would talk about baseball despite constant nagging from Petrash and the other students. But one day, Petrash recalls, she had this to say: "My brother Frank is a good baseball player, but my little brother Joe is going to be even better!"
That little brother would be Joe Torre, now manager of the Yankees.
And Petrash's high school English teacher? Bob Sheppard, the Yankee Stadium public address announcer then and now.
But now that Petrash, 54, lives in Kensington, Md., he's become an Orioles fan -- with a little nudging from his wife. The shift in allegiance was confirmed many years ago when he took his oldest son, who's now 30, to a game at the Orioles' old Memorial Stadium, and from their seats behind home plate, they saw a triple play.
Remembering Dad
"Memories like this matter, and it's what and how you make the memories that are really important," he says. "I ask dads, 'What do you remember about your childhood with your father?' It might have been opening day at a baseball game each year, but it could be simpler. I remember on Fridays, my dad had a treat for us in his top coat pocket. It was never a big present but it was thoughtful."
He adds: "So much of how we parent is based on our childhood, either things we want to repeat or things we want to avoid."
Petrash describes "Covering Home" as "part spring training, part team meeting and part skill clinic," and the goal in the end -- of a good game and in life -- is to develop well-rounded players.
How it started
The whole baseball-fatherhood analogy evolved while Petrash was at the Waldorf school, which pairs the same teacher with the same students for several grades so they experience school as a team. An unintentional side effect is that teachers also become very connected with the parents, Petrash says.
"I always wanted to see fathers as involved in their kids' lives as the mothers were. I launched a fathers group, a group of 25 men in a room every Wednesday," he explains.
At first, the dads weren't willing participants -- they were "encouraged" by the mothers -- but once they came and began sharing stories, it became clear that they, too, wanted to have meaningful and expanded relationships with their children.
Petrash recalls one father telling him that the hardest part of his day was those first few seconds when he walked in the door after work as he tried to make a transition from dedicated employee to devoted dad, without a minute for himself.
"This immediately brought to mind an image of Ken Singleton (a former Baltimore Orioles player, now an announcer for the Yankees). What he'd do when he was a ballplayer was each time he'd come up, he'd reach into the batters' box and pick up three stones. It was a ritual to remind himself that every time he came up to bat he was entitled to three good pitches," Petrash says.
"I shared this image with the dads and told them, 'You can stop before the door and literally or figuratively pick up three stones as a reminder that you're about to spend three hours with the most wonderful people in the world."'
Changing pace
Another baseball analogy that works in the game of parenting is being able to adapt to the always-changing pace.
Baseball can be "uneventful at times," Petrash acknowledges, but then, out of the blue, there can be a moment of intense drama. It's the same thing that happens at home when the morning routine runs smoothly for weeks and then one day one child has the stomach flu, another can't find his homework and another refuses to wear a coat in the middle of winter.
"Good teams and good players stay calm at those dramatic moments, and good parents, too. ... Parents need to respond calmly and try to fix the monkey wrench. And remember, after a bad pitch, it might be time to call a time out," Petrash says.
Also, he adds, just like in baseball, you can't win them all, and you're not supposed to.
"This is how baseball is different from other sports: There is an extended season. It's a long-term test. It's what you do after you lose that's important. Good teams can regroup and halt a losing streak after a game or two -- and it's always possible to reverse your fortunes."