I sat there, the silence stretching between us for several seconds.

“Opening day is Saturday, Dad,” Toby said, his voice dropping slightly. “Come watch. I’d like you to be there.”

I felt a physical ache in my chest, like something old and rusted was trying to move.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

On Saturday morning, the sky was a bright, pale blue.

I drove down to the park in Dublin, my hands gripping the steering wheel.

In the passenger seat of my car sat the cardboard box.

Inside it, wrapped in a clean towel, was the Rawlings glove from 1992.

The park was loud.

Kids in bright blue jerseys were running around, their cleats clicking on the concrete paths.

Parents were setting up folding chairs along the baseline fences.

I saw Toby standing near the dugout, wearing a clipboard and a matching blue coach’s cap.

He was leaning down, showing a little boy with messy blonde hair how to position his feet.

He looked so much like I did thirty-four years ago, but there was a patience in his shoulders that I never had.

I walked up to the green chain-link fence, my legs feeling heavy.

I stood there for a few minutes, just watching him.

Toby turned around to grab a bucket of balls and saw me.

His face went still.

The easy smile he had for the kids vanished, replaced by that familiar, guarded look he had worn around me for decades.

He walked over to the fence, wiping his hands on his grass-stained knees.

“Hey, Dad,” he said.

“Hey, son.”

The silence threatened to swallow us right there, with fifty people laughing and shouting around us.

I didn’t let it.

I reached into my canvas bag, pulled out the towel, and unwrapped the glove.

I held it out through a gap in the fence.

Toby stared at it.

His eyes locked onto the dark, oiled leather, and his jaw tensed.

I could see his fingers twitch slightly.

“I’ve kept it oiled,” I said, my voice cracking more than I wanted it to. “Every spring. Since 1992.”

He didn’t take it right away.

He just looked at the glove, then looked up at my face.

“Why, Dad?” he asked. His voice was very quiet, barely carrying over the sound of a kid hitting a ball off a tee nearby.

“Because I was wrong,” I said.

I had never said those words to him in his entire life.

“I thought I was making you tough, Toby. But I was just being a bully. I’m sorry.”

Toby didn’t say anything for what felt like an eternity.

His hand reached out, his fingers slowly wrapping around the old Rawlings.

He slid his hand into the pocket.

It was tight, of course. His hands are much larger now, the hands of a grown man who works with tools and raises a family.

But the leather yielded.

He smacked his fist into the pocket once, twice.