The wipers slapped the rain from the glass in that half-soothing rhythm familiar to a Seattlite. My father tuned in the pregame show on the radio as he picked his way through the thickening traffic of I-5 toward the Kingdome. We were only in town to visit for a few days, but my son Taylor was prattling excitedly on his way to his first major league baseball game.

"Dad, do people catch all the balls hit into the stands?" he asked, tamping his new mitt down a little firmer on his hand.

"No, they’re very hard to catch in the air—most balls are dropped," I replied. "But if you’re the first one to pick it up you get to keep it."

"Have you ever got one, Dad?"

"Nope."

Nine-year-old Taylor had never seen a live game before since nomadic military life had stranded us overseas for the past three years. Now, after arriving back in the states only days before, we were on our way to make up for lost time.

"How often do you go to games, Grandpa?" Taylor inquired.

"I really don’t go anymore, except on special occasions like this," replied my dad. "There are so many games on cable now that it’s much easier to stay home and watch."

"Do you think they’ll win today?"

"Oh, maybe, you just never know."

I glanced over at my dad. This was July 1995, the mid-point of the first magical Mariners’ season, which wouldn’t become magic until one play in late September when Edgar Martinez’s line drive into the left-field corner against the Yankees scored Ken Griffey Jr. from second base and launched the M’s first post-season celebration in franchise history. I remember Fisk’s animated home-run and Gibson’s homeric tribute to Roy Hobbs, but Junior’s ceaseless grin at the bottom of the Mariner pile at home plate wasn’t much broader than my own – the fulfillment of a secret dream. For two decades growing up around Seattle, being a Mariner fan was a dull ache. We never achieved the tragic dignity of Chicago or Boston; we had never once loved, only lost. Long-suffering Cubs and Red Sox at least have something to remember. In Seattle’s tattered history, fond memories meant finishing above .500, and in the summer of 1995, my dad and I kept our dreams to ourselves, sharing only the knowing looks of the barely optimistic.

My son, however, had high hopes for his team he had never seen. Taylor has no real home. He has already lived in five states and one foreign country and said goodbye to more homes and friends than I ever had. Against such transience and uncertainty he has adopted the Mariners in self-defense – a means to anchor himself to the planet, a step-home. Though Air Force life has taken me far away, I still have an identity in that team, that place. Taylor pretends to be from where I’m from, but he can never say he’s "from somewhere." Of course this problem is commonplace now, even for those not in military service. But still I wonder what happens inside when you can only answer the question "Where are you from?" by listing where you’ve been.

We exited the freeway onto downtown streets amidst a bobbing canopy of well-used umbrellas. The Kingdome’s massive mountain of concrete soon rose up from between the buildings. Taylor was awed by its immense grayness and grunting weight. But though its novelty captured my son, the aging Seattle dome is rather dreary – a monument to sterility. Like the decade of its design, such multi-purpose architecture has gone the way of disco duds in our collective imagination – images which now remind us of a somewhat self-delusive past. The Kingdome’s generic, cheerless presence has little redeeming aesthetic value, especially with a diamond inside it. On this day, however, dryness was welcome, even at the cost of ambience.

We parked the car some distance away in the free lots under the Alaskan-way viaduct, and marched through the now-sputtering drops toward the gates. My dad and I hadn’t said much to each other in the car, not so much because my son monopolized the conversation with his questions, but because we usually didn’t, preferring our own thoughts or just listening to the radio. We had always spoken sparely of life, drawing our words in thimbles from dark wells of thought.

But we could talk sports in buckets. It poured from us in currents of pent-up language seeking the path of least resistance. Sports mattered in our lives. My father was a high school basketball coach for 25 years and my earliest memories are in the gym – the thudding reverberations of a solitary dribble echoing off distant walls in the still-darkness, the shrill chirps of rubber soles straining against lacquered maple boards. We attended scores of games together, he scouting a future opponent while I did the shot-chart for him. For year we watched each other play, his teams and mine – little league, high school, college. We went to football games and baseball games, we followed the Huskies, the Sonics, the Seahawks, and finally the Mariners. We played gym-rat basketball every Saturday, and golf in the summer. We talked winning and losing, strategy and fundamentals. We always kept our eye on the ball through a year with four sports, not seasons. Like a knotted nylon net or the webbing of a mitt, our relationship was woven around the ball. The plays we watched and made gave us a common language.

Now, as we settled into our seats perched high in the third deck on the first-base side, the words came more easily. Our tongues curled around the ball like that giant wad of gum in Jay Buhner’s cheek, chewing on the possibilities, savoring the juices of the game. We analyzed Randy Johnson’s pitching, Griffey’s swing, Buhner’s slump. We debated the pitching rotation and the odds of getting a foul ball hit near enough to give Taylor a run for it. We mused over player salaries and the future of the team. We talked about everything, and maybe nothing.

In the sixth, Tino Martinez launched a homer to right, the ball rocketing up to our eye-level before falling away softly into the scurrying seats. As the post-homerun fireworks exploded brilliantly, cascading down from the inside of the domed roof, I noticed their reflection in my son’s eyes – he seemed to have a hero. I noticed my dad, however, looking at me. Was he looking for the reflection in my eyes? Was he wondering if we had seen, maybe felt, the same thing? He knew Tino was not my hero, but did he wonder who was--or if I had one at all? He couldn’t ask, and I couldn’t tell. We were speechless. So we discussed the next batter.

Taylor, meanwhile, soaked in the spectacle. He talked about that hit over and over again – bathed in it, sloshed around in euphoria and immortality. I knew better, of course. My son hadn’t learned to steel himself, to protect his hopes from sabotage by cocooning them in layers of analysis. Dad and I believed in restraint. Taylor had dreams; we had composure. The kind of composure that often wins in the final seconds of a game, but loses in the waning seconds of life. As if reserve amidst the cacophony of the gym applied to the antiseptic silence of the hospital room. As if "nice game" was a euphemism for "I love you."

We just couldn’t give ourselves completely to the game anymore than we could give ourselves to each other. Like first-timers on the high dive we always held something back, clutching our dreams like life-preservers. Dreams were the rub for us, too – the dreams of our souls, countries not so much undiscovered as unrevealed. We met on the field, the court, the course, to play and watch and be. We shared the moment, looking at the ball rather than each other. But maybe we saw each other in it. Perhaps play is the thing.

In Norman Maclean’s own story of fathers and sons and fishing, A River Runs Through It, he says, "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us" – their words concealed beneath the water, under the rocks of the riverbed itself. I, too, believe they are hidden, but somewhere else. Under the hoop, behind the plate, are the words. They’re written on balls that travel from hand to hand, mitt to mitt, father to son to son – profound, eternal, melodic, Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Taylor loves to play catch. He imagines himself a star infielder or outfielder or pitcher with a magnetic glove and cannon arm. He grits his teeth and narrows his eyes in determination as he winds and slings his fastest ball into my waiting mitt. It registers merely a muffled slap, but to Taylor it sings and pops. He needs better form, more concentration, a stronger arm, but I usually hold my tongue. He’s pitching in the World Series, but I’m still stuck in little league smiling through my embarrassment as he trots out to right field. The words won’t come, so I keep throwing.

In the eighth, the A’s pulled ahead on a three-run blast by Mark McGwire. The Mariners mounted a small rally in the last of the ninth but fell a run short, losing 5-4 on a game-ending double play. As we shuffled out of the sullen stadium, Taylor had that look kids get when Dad says he doesn’t have time to play catch and they’re left standing alone, hunched from the weight of their mitt and ball, angry and weary. He squinted to stem the liquid refugees trying to flee the anger and disappointment of his heart.

I, too, felt betrayed, wishing I could have witnessed a dramatic come-from-behind win on the game’s final play. But I’m old enough to face reality. If only for a moment, I was at their mercy. In my silence, I could only pretend not to care. Somewhere inside a tiny pain flared-up and bitter, angry words ran their mental course regardless of my anesthetic precautions. I sought cheer. Despite our attendance, this was only one of 162 games they’d play over more than six months. We would move on, but they’d be back out there tomorrow with laundered uniforms and hopes, the balls package-fresh, infield like smooth cocoa, bases bright. The salve of sport, the future, consoled me.

Outside it had stopped raining, but it was still putty gray and we dodged the puddles strewn across our path. In the car on the way home, we listened in silence to the post-game show on the radio, each of us replaying the game in our minds, wondering what might have been. The following day Taylor and I would depart for our next home, leaving the Mariners and my dad behind, anxious to settle down once again.