Stephen Piscotty and explaining to my 6 year old that his favorite player has been traded

I had one of those Dad moments a couple weeks ago that just shuts you down. If you’re a dad reading this, you know what I mean.

I don’t know why Stephen Piscotty is Connor’s favorite player. I’m not really sure he knows either, other than he thinks his last name is cool to say. The sure thing though is that Connor loved it whenever #55 came up to the plate. Piscotty at bats were the only still moments he usually had while watching Cardinals games with me. The rest of the game is the usual six year old’s mix of chatter, singing to himself, asking questions like why do the Cardinals wear red on their uniforms, and generally failing to acknowledge there is a game going on at all. Hearing Ricky Horton or Tim McCarver or Danny Mac announce that Piscotty was getting ready to hit though and it all stopped. Connor became the most locked in baseball fan you’ve ever seen for the length of that at bat.

My son is an awesome little kid. He’s the strongest, bravest, orneriest kid I know. He was born 15 weeks early and spent his first 3 months of life in the St. Francis NICU in Tulsa, OK. From day one he’s been taking timelines, laughing at them, and then flying through trying to get things done early. He had four surgeries before he was three years old. He couldn’t be bothered to wait for his first tooth to fall out so he knocked it out on a brick flower planter at eighteen months. All in all he’s a rough and tumble normal six year old now.

On the flip side he has one of the most sensitive souls I’ve ever been around which is why I was worried about how he was going to react when I told him that Piscotty doesn’t play for St. Louis anymore. We had talked a little bit about how Piscotty’s mom was sick last year when the ALS news came out and how rough it must be to be so far from home when your family is dealing with a disease like that. Connor has a kindred empathy for people who are sick due to his own various hospital stays. His professions of choice when he grows up right now are to be a doctor so he can help kids like himself or an astronaut so he can be like Buzz Lightyear. We’ll see how that all works out.

When we sat down to talk about it I expected him to be upset or sad or heartbroken. Instead what I got was thoughtful silence and a single question. He thought about it for thirty seconds or so and then said “Will Piscotty get to see his mom more while she’s sick?” I’m not at all ashamed to admit I just about cried right then and there. Sometimes I think God uses moments like these to make us see that true humanity still exists. I told him he would because the Cardinals traded him to Oakland so he could be close to where his mom lives to which he replied “That was really nice of them. It is good he gets to see his mom and help her while she’s sick.” After I agreed that it was really nice of them he asked if we could still root for him if we saw an A’s game on TV. I told him that we absolutely could. He told me in no uncertain terms that was good because Piscotty was still his favorite player and he was still going to collect his baseball cards. I happily agreed to those terms.