My Dad bought me a baseball bat for my birthday. That is not an unusual gift for a boy. What makes the gift exceptional is that it was for my 48th birthday, 40 years after he gave me my first one.

I was playing adult league baseball for what would be my final summer in the sun when a long, triangular box arrived at my home. Inside was a bat, 34 inches long, weighing 32 ounces; the exact dimensions and weight that I was using at the time. Burned into the beautiful wood was the logo of “Louisville Slugger.” On the barrel of the bat where the player’s autograph is, was my name, just like a big leaguer. I took the warm wood in my hands and felt the life in the bat. I was a boy again.

My first bat was given with this admonition, “This is a real bat son. Don’t be hitting rocks with this one.” Those words sounded in my head again as if my father was standing in the room watching my eyes get big and the smile spread across my face just as they did when I was eight.

The bats I had back then were beat up and salvaged. They were held together with wire, nails, and tape. As boys, we would hit anything, including rocks; many rocks, leaving dents and dings in the barrel of the bats, and sometimes breaking the bat.

Such activity would make my father, a baseball purist, cringe when he saw the damage, or worse, caught us in the act. A baseball bat to him was a thing of beauty that had one purpose, to hit a baseball. The striking of rocks or anything else was an abomination, a sacrilege against the holy glory of hitting.

In that last season, my 40th, the bats were aluminum. The ball goes farther faster and the bats are forgiving, but it isn’t the same. With aluminum, you can get a piece of it and still get a hit. With wood, you have to be a real hitter. Many modern players don’t make it in the majors because they can’t hit with wood.

I took my hardened ash Louisville Slugger with my name burned into it to a game. I wanted to hear the “crack” of the bat again, not the “ping.” I wanted to feel the ball make contact like so long ago, to feel the sting if I missed, or the power of a solid hit in the sweet spot.

I popped a long single to right where the fielder was playing me to pull the ball to left. My young man’s mind told me I could stretch it into a double, but my old man’s legs did not cooperate and I was thrown out at second. It was still a hit, and it felt glorious.

Smiling at the ribbing I was taking from players on both sides, I trotted off the field and retrieved my bat. I saw the mark left by the ball from my hit, and smiled more. I looked down, saw a rock, picked it up and hit it over the side fence. I smiled even wider as I looked at the dent, knowing that somewhere my Dad was shaking his head in disgust.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, and his other works viewed at: www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us.