In an effort to write more than I have been, I decided to try at least putting together “Just One Thing” about each game I cover. It might be about a particular play, an at-bat, or a guy’s walk-up song. Whatever piques my interest that game. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Look at the lineups between the Senators and SeaWolves. The names of baseball royalty jump off the page.

Clemens.

Gibson.

Bichette.

This game has always been about fathers and sons. It is traditionally how the game has been passed down from one generation to the next. It’s what they make movies about when grown men watching are reduced to a puddle of tears while the music crescendoes during one final game of catch.

It’s how I came to love baseball.

Even when I played in an adult baseball league long past my prime, my parents would make the hour-plus drive to watch me play. Not much changed in the thirty years between then and when I started in Little League as an 8-year-old.

Friday night and Sunday afternoon I had different company than usual on press row at FNB Field. Seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens and his wife Debbie sat just to my right cheering on their son Kody who was recently promoted to the Double-A Erie SeaWolves.

Debbie lived and died during Kody’s at-bats rooting like only a mother can, while Roger was more analytical in reviewing his son’s trips to the plate. That can probably be expected from the pitcher who won 354 games and struck out 4,672 batters in his 24-year playing career.

In the end, though, they were just another set of parents who came to see their son play and root him on during his baseball journey. Every father, mother, and son can relate to that.