Before I did a lot of things in my life, I attended my first baseball game.
In fact, before I even spoke my first word, I had seen the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field.
I marked that off of my bucket list before I even knew what a bucket list was.
Or a bucket.
Or a list.
I'm not one to encourage taking infants to public events such as a baseball game, nor are my parents, but I thank them for breaking that rule that day in Chicago.
Now that I do know what a bucket list is, I keep one mentally and it has a lot to do with baseball.
My father, brother and I are all on a mission to see a game in all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums.
I can't give you an exact date on when this goal was set for all three of us, but I suppose you could say it was when my father fell in love for the first time. Not with my mother, but with the Houston Astros.
When he was a child, my dad visited the Astrodome for the first time with his father and brother.
From that moment forward, he became not only an Astros fan, but a diehard baseball fan.
Listening to him talk about that first visit to the supposed Eighth Wonder of the World is something I'll never tire of.
Last year when the powers that be in Houston decided to do away with the Astrodome, my father wrote a column on his memory of it, and the auctioning off of parts of the stadium that were going up for sale.
I told a friend of mine I was scouring the internet trying to find a piece of the stadium to get him for Christmas, to which she responded, "Why? That seems kind of dumb."
"You should hear him talk about that place," I told her.
That convinced her.
So, from the time my father was young, he was hooked.
It took some convincing for me.
When I was young, my sports interest was small, but like anyone who has a big brother, I wanted to be just like mine, and still do.
Like my father, my brother has taught me an incredible amount in my life, not the least of which is a love for sports.
For all three of us, baseball is a bond that will never break.
As I said before, we're all trying to get to all 30 MLB parks before we die.
But it's not really a race. We aren't in a rush. We're savoring every hot dog, smelling every blade of grass and screaming off baseball cliches one park at a time.
For as long as I can remember, when my mother would start pitching destinations for a family vacation, one of the three of us would immediately ask, "Is there a baseball park we haven't been to nearby?"
My mother and sister both roll their eyes at this, but they secretly enjoy it.
All three of us have been to parks that the others haven't.
In fact, in the spring of 2009, the three of us and my mother had a trip planned to Boston for a week, during which we would attend Opening Day at Fenway Park.
My dad caught a terrible virus and wasn't able to go.
It turned out to be one of my favorite ball parks I've visited, and one of my favorite vacations during my lifetime. But whenever I think about it, I regret so much that I wasn't able to share it with my dad.
Fenway is a mecca of baseball, and I hope I can experience it with him one day.
My brother and I have both been to parks with friends, or with just my dad, but there's nothing comparable to when all three of us are there together, crossing another one off the list.
The joy it brings my father to have both of us there with him shines vibrantly on his face, and is mirrored on both mine and my brother's.
My dad called me a few days ago saying he had something to tell me.
Usually when a parent says that, it isn't an exorbitantly jubilant phone call, but this time, exorbitantly jubilant would be an understatement.
He told me he is in the planning stages of a trip over the Fourth of July holiday weekend this summer, in which all three of us would knock three stadiums off the list; Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburg.
"I know you don't know where you'll be yet this summer, but I hope you can come," he said, knowing it was a useless exercise of fatherly duty to plant the foolish idea in my head that whatever tedious job I'll be doing this summer could keep me from going on a trip that's been in development for years.
There is nothing in the world that could stop me from going on that trip. Nothing.
We all have different total numbers, but, like I said, it isn't really a race.
None of us are rushing to finish before the two others.
We've often talked about the day when we'll cross the turnstile of our final park.
Should that be at the same time for all of us, it will be indescribable feeling.
There will be thousands of people surrounding us, but I won't see them.
I'll see only my dad and brother, two men who have both taught me so much, handing in ticket number 30.
Should that moment come, I know I'll never forget it, and one day, perhaps I'll tell my son and his brother that story about our final turnstile crossing, as vividly and passionately as my father told my brother and I about his first.
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