Private Lives: Personal essays on the news of the world and the news of our lives.

WASHINGTON, N. J. — Football may be America’s most popular sport, but baseball is still where our hearts lie, especially this weekend when the season starts anew. Back in 1985, my own heart was firmly with the New York Mets. Most of my friends were Yankees fans, which was precisely why this immigrant teenager fell for the Mets: They needed my help. They won my loyalty when they lost the division to the St. Louis Cardinals that year, proving once again that misery loves company.

My father, on the other hand, did not care about baseball, and truth be told, I wasn’t entirely certain he cared about me. He’d left South Korea for America when I was a toddler, and seven years passed before my mother, my siblings and I followed him here. By ’85 our family had been reunited for four years, so I probably should have known him better. But I didn’t.

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The problem was, he didn’t talk much and wasn’t the touchy-feely type, and I guess I wasn’t, either. We spent many hours at the Oriental gift shop he owned at the Jersey Shore, where we sold silk kimonos and ceramic vases and trinkets from the Far East. But that added up to just being in the same place at the same time. In a way, my father was like a co-worker at a job, a familiar stranger I saw every day.

Two recreational activities he enjoyed were golfing and fishing, neither of which I considered a real sport. On our days off during the summer, he’d drag the whole family to the piers to fish, and whenever I cast a line, I’d swing the rod like a bat, much to his chagrin. Back at the store, I listened to games on my Walkman, oblivious to customers who waved their arms to get my attention.

Watching those slick major leaguers turn double plays on television made me want a glove of my own. To my surprise, my father said he wanted one, too.

“You?” I asked. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. He was on the portly side and not exactly graceful, but then again, one of the pitchers on the Mets, Sid Fernandez, was even fatter and threw one heck of a curveball. So I thought, Why not?

We bought two gloves, and that evening, he suggested we go out to the courtyard in our apartment complex and toss the ball around. I’d already practiced catching and throwing in gym class at school, but I could tell this was a first for my father, because every time he caught the ball, it landed squarely in his palm instead of the webbing. If you’ve ever caught a ball with a baseball glove, you know how much this hurts.

But my father caught ball after ball this way. Slap! Slap! He winced. After about five minutes, I told him I’d had enough. It wasn’t out of mercy, but for my own self-interest. Neighborhood kids were watching and would no doubt tease me later for having an old man who didn’t even know how to properly catch a baseball.

My father took the glove off and shook his left hand. His palm was as red as a beet.

Dad, who passed away 11 years ago, never told me he loved me. But that sound of the baseball landing in the soft flesh of his hand, over and over again — it spoke its own tender language, though at the time, all I felt was shame.

In 1986, the Mets owned the best record in baseball. We squeaked by the Houston Astros’ Mike Scott, he of the gravity-defying split-finger fastball, and then it was on to the World Series. The World Series! I was beyond excited, and then I was beyond inconsolable. I watched the first five games of the series alone and I suffered with my team. In a blink, the Boston Red Sox were a win away from taking the title. Saturday would be the sixth game, and even though Saturdays were the busiest days for the store, I had to stay home.

“My team needs me,” I told my parents.

“That’s ridiculous!” my mother said.

“It’s O.K.,” my father said. “We’ll manage.”

It was 10 at night when my parents returned, exhausted. My mother headed straight for bed, but my father hung around.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“I want to see the game,” he said.

I said nothing. I was mad. I was mad at my parents, for no real reason except that I was an insufferable adolescent and they were often in my field of vision. I was mad because the Mets were losing. And I got madder still when I caught my father nodding off. He was falling asleep because it was now past midnight and he’d had a long day, but in that moment, I was so indignant. My team was one strike away from losing everything, and it felt as if it was his fault.

Then, as we now know, the impossible happened in the bottom of the 10th inning: two runs to tie, then the ball rolled between poor Bill Buckner’s legs.

I jumped out of my seat as Ray Knight scampered home for the improbable, ridiculous win. My father blinked and clapped.

It didn’t feel like it at the time, but you know what? We watched that game together.

Sung J. Woo is the author of the forthcoming novel “Love Love.”