The last time I saw my uncle, he was turning 91. Frail but smiling, he sat wrapped in a blanket printed with his grandchildren’s faces, his military medals gleaming above his recliner. I brought him a bright blue Brooklyn Dodgers cap, knowing it might be our last visit.

He lifted it from the bag, turned it in his hands, and smiled. When he set it on his head, the brim dipped low over his eyes.

“We’ll always root for the same team,” I said.

He nodded once, as if the words carried more meaning than I could express.

He had grown up on Long Island, traveling to Brooklyn to watch the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. Even after moving to Massachusetts, he never switched allegiances. He stayed loyal through the heartbreak of 1957, when the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, and through every decade since. Baseball had become his anchor, a thread that never broke.

I grew up on the other coast, in Los Angeles, where the game was constant. My father, a World War II veteran,........

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