The last time I saw my dad smile

It was 45 years ago this week—Sunday afternoon, July 11, 1965—that was the last time I saw my dad smile.

But first, some background.

While my inclinations toward music came without a doubt from my mother (and Dad would have been the first to admit that!), my dad gave me baseball.

The first baseball game I can remember ever seeing had nothing to do with Dad. It was at Wrigley Field in the mid-1940s, and I was 8 or 9. Visiting my grandmother's aunt in Illinois, 40 miles northwest of Chicago, was something we did almost every summer till I was in college.  

That first year Aunt Doll and her Chicago friends, Hazel and Joe Wellnitz, took us to a Cubs game.  All I remember about it, except for the huge scoreboard in center field, was that Doll dragged me down to the front row of the box seats to get an autograph from Cubs star Bill Nicholson.  It was only three or four years after the Cubs had been in the World Series. (Yes, that really happened once!)