So last night at church, in a class Rebecca and I are starting the Pastor asked us what sounded like a simple question. “What is your favorite childhood memory?” I honestly had never given that any thought. Thank God I was the last one to give a response. I could not think of anything. I felt a trickle of perspiration bead up on my forehead. I listened as people thought back to family vacations, Christmas mornings, grandparents, summer days and the kinds of moments we tend to associate with childhood.

I searched my own memory and realized I really didn’t have an answer.

Both of my parents died when I was young. My mom had ALS and was sick mostly when I was young and dad had a massive stroke a little later. I barely had the chance to know them. When you lose your parents early, childhood memories can be strange things. There are pieces of them—faces, places, moments—but not always the long collection of stories you wish you had.

It was now my turn and I told this story about a childhood experience I had on the “Joey The Clown Show,” which was a kids’ show that came on every day in Charlotte. Another story for another time. Definitely not a favorite memory but it filled in the blank of that question.

The great John Prine once had a song called “Jesus The Missing Years”. The song fills in the gap in the Gospels between Jesus as a boy in the temple and the start of his ministry around age 30. It’s irreverent but affectionate, and the joke is that Prine gives the Son of God a very human life.

I got home, started watching the Atlanta Braves baseball game still trying to come up with a memory, any memory. Not comparing myself to Jesus but I have years that to this day seem to be missing.

Somewhere between Michael Harris’s three hits and Dider Fuentes’ stellar relief job it hit me. Baseball. A memory of my dad loving baseball, and somehow, in the relatively short time I had with him, he passed that love on to me. Remembering a trip that we took to Fulton County Stadium to watch The Braves play the San Francisco Giants. That Saturday I got to witness Hank Aaron hitting his 500th Home Run.

At that time I could not possibly understand how important that memory would become. I was a kid just watching a baseball game with my dad. Henry Aaron rounding the bases. The crowd was going crazy. It was exciting but it was just one night in my young life.

Only later do you understand what some moments are worth.

Hank Aaron would go on to become one of the greatest players in baseball history. His pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home-run record would become part of American history. But when I think about that night now, the number 500 isn’t really what matters.

I wish I could remember more conversations. I’d like to know what he worried about, what made him laugh, what he dreamed about, and what he thought about the man his son would someday become. I never got to ask him any of that but I know he loved baseball.

And he gave that love to to me.

That’s one of the peculiar things about losing someone young. They can be gone for most of your life and still leave fingerprints all over it. Something as simple as loving a baseball team can become a connection stretching across decades.

So I think I finally found the answer to my pastor’s question. My favorite childhood memory isn’t some perfect picture of a childhood, there just aren’t enough pictures in my life but there is this one made up picture of a snot nosed kid watching Hank Aaron circling the bases, making history and a son watching with his dad. For a baseball fan that is quite a memory. But after all these years I realize something, Hammerin’ Hank wasn’t the most important person in that memory.

Go Braves and let’s win the World Series.