Hard Eights and Husky Boys

May 21, 2022·33 min·2 clips

John Tong's immigrant Chinese father, a professor of ancient Chinese philosophy, concluded that baseball was 'simply sideways golf' — then enrolled his son in Little League the next day.

Baseball starts almost like a spell. A teenager sits with his dad at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, stunned by how clearly his father can read pitchers, hitters, nerves, and strategy. He wants that fluency, so he studies box scores and scouting report books, trying to tune his ear to the game. The memory stays simple and tender. Then the story moves into another kind of lesson: what people bring with them into ordinary rooms. Three men pick a movie. The narrator expects Arnie to go for something cool or action-heavy, but Arnie says he likes stories about men and women facing serious emotional challenges. That answer changes the whole night. They rent a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and head back to John's house, where the TV room feels comfortable and loaded at the same time. Photos cover the wall. John's daughter died two years earlier after living with cystic fibrosis, and the room still seems arranged around her absence. Ernie carries a different fear. His daughter is in Houston, struggling with addiction, and sometimes she calls just to say she is okay. The daughters would have been peers. One died. One is still alive, but far away and in danger. The movie gives the men somewhere to put all of that. As Sidney forms a paternalistic bond with John C. Reilly's character, the three men sit shoeless and close, letting the fiction say some of what they cannot. Nothing gets fixed, which is part of why the scene lands. It is socks, chairs, photos, and a movie picked almost by accident. Even the credits stay close, thanking the storytellers, naming the people behind the show, and returning to Family Ghosts' idea that every house is haunted.

As heard by us

A baseball lesson opens into a quietly bruising story about knowledge, grief, and the men who carry it.

Family Ghosts begins with a teenage ritual at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and follows how admiration can turn into a private education. The narrator studies his father calling breaking balls, reading a pitcher's nerves, and expecting a fourth changeup, then tries to build the…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for a baseball-game memory that carries you into a quiet movie night with two men living with loss.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Family Ghosts