My Father's Game 

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Rick Wilber is the author of some wonderful science fiction stories, from “Run Down West” to “Ice Covers the Hole.”  Many of his published stories revolve around baseball and are collected in Where Garagiola Waits, but one of the reasons for Wilber’s consistent use of baseball as a backdrop is his relationship to his father, Del Wilber, one-time catcher for the Cardinals, Phillies, and Red Sox.

However, Rick Wilber’s relationship to baseball and his father is much more complicated than simply that of the son of a major leaguer whose life revolved around baseball. In My Father’s Game, Wilber collects a series of essays which reflect on his father’s final year of life as he lived in an assisted living facility near Wilber’s St. Petersburg home.  As the physically closest of Del Wilber’s five children, it fell to Rick to become his father’s caregiver, a relationship which proved more difficult and contentious than Rick had any idea it might.

The book is subtitled Life, Death, and Baseball, and Wilber does examine all three, although the title is misleading.  My Father’s Game is not a biography of Del Wilber’s life and career, although both are covered.  It is primarily a look at an adult child coming to terms with an aging parent and the way disease can change, not only a relationship, but the individual who is suffering.  In this way, My Father’s Game is a universal book about any child who finds himself as caregiver to a parent.

Since the book is comprised of separate essays, reading them together proves to be somewhat repetitive. Many of the stories of Del Wilber’s career are retold multiple times in the essays, some times in the same words. Nevertheless, that is part of a relationship, having familiar stories to fall back on.  In fact, Wilber deals explicitly with those stories when he discovers that some of his father’s stories, such as posing for a Norman Rockwell cover, aren’t entirely true.  Furthermore, that discovery, as well as the different manner in which Wilber and his father relate compared to the relationship Del Wilber maintained with his other children, causes unexpected strife between the siblings.

Most of Wilber’s stories, however, held up.  He did hit three home runs in a 3-0 victory over Cincinnati the night his daughter came home from the hospital. He did have a season in which he had more runs batted in than hits, he did coach several major leaguers before playing his first game in the majors, and he did manage the Texas Rangers, albeit for a single, winning, game.

Del Wilber’s career as a baseball player was of prime importance to his life, and also had a strong effect on Rick Wilber’s life, both good and bad.  For the purposes of My Father’s Game, however, it is simply a hook upon which to hang the more important discussion of dealing with an aging parent, whether it is Del or his wife, Taffy, who both Wilber men must deal with as she succumbs to Alzheimer’s Disease.

Wilber brings humanity to the role of caregiver, although it seems that he has written the book a little too soon after his father’s death to have fully forgiven his father for the last year of his life and the demands Del placed on Rick.  Nevertheless, Rick is able to give his father the benefit of many doubts.  Wilber notes that as his father was suffering, aging, and, eventually dying, he also was working with his own son, who has Down’s syndrome.  Wilber does not fully explore the dichotomy of having parents becoming more reliant on him even as his son is taking his own steps towards independence, although a similar book looking at his relationship with his own son would be welcome, especially if it is as insightful as My Father’s Game.

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