Statue On Guard

Several years ago my Father's Day gift was a statue of a baseball player, proudly on duty guarding Dad's Garden. He stands on a home plate we used in practice when I coached the Lisle Lions, and he has some stones near his base. One reads DEDICATION and the other has the number 14 painted on it. I shared that number for the past 20 years with Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs, certainly the finest all-around player and gentleman the Cubs have ever had.

A great garden has the mark of its gardeners on it, and my statue helps with that. In addition, I placed under my player some dirt collected at the two fields I played and coached on, at the state tournament field my team played on, at the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyer, Iowa, and at Wrigley Field. A kind member of the groundskeeping crew helped me with that last item in 1995.