Today I have a 17-year-old who impresses the heck out of me

As I sat thinking about the fact that today is my daughter Melanie's 17th birthday, I was seriously about to type this sentence: "I wonder what it's like to be a fourth child."

This would be a stupid thing to type, you see, because I AM a fourth child. But really, I'm a different kind of fourth child from Melanie. I'm the baby of my family, the fourth of four, and my siblings were (are) all more than decade older than me.

I was essentially raised an only child.

Melanie, on the other hand, is the fourth of five siblings who are closer in age. She has spent her life living in the kind of chaos that reigns in households as big as ours.

She has learned to adapt, of course, but more than that, she has learned to thrive.

For a long time, Melanie was like the true baby of the family in that she was the youngest girl and, well, she just always seemed like a little kid to me.

Then one day – suddenly, shockingly – she wasn't. She was a young woman. This happened a couple of years ago and I'm still trying to get over it.

But while I stumble, she flourishes. She's an honors student who plays soccer and serves as vice president of her class. She has a boyfriend (whom I like very much) and engages in all of the activities and programs in which smart kids engage.

She's rarely the first to do anything in our house. It's hard, when your the sixth-oldest person in the family, to be truly original. But where she shines, where she's unique, is the way she pulls it all off. She has to work hard to succeed, and she does just that. Even in the things that seem to come easily to her.

And today she's 17, which is one of my favorite ages. You're not an adult, but you're also quickly leaving behind all vestiges of kid-hood. She has a lot to learn, and she has to mature as much as any 17-year-old, but it occurs to me that no matter where life takes her, she's going to be just fine.

That's as much as you can ask for as a parent. Once you know they're going to be fine, you breathe a little sigh of relief. That doesn't mean you won't worry about them. It doesn't mean they won't screw up...sometimes majorly.

But it does mean that, all things considered, you know she's going to be the kind of grown-up of whom you as a dad will be proud.

In a lot of ways, she already is.

Happy birthday, little Melanie.

For it's money they have and peace they lack

There is a cult within America – populated largely by white, middle-aged males, but not limited exclusively to them – that has romanticized the game of baseball beyond what it probably deserves. I am perhaps one of them, but at least I know I am one of them.

The reasons for this idolization of the sport are varied. For many, baseball was their best (and perhaps only) connection with their fathers. Addressing his dad, Sting once sang of a childhood in which "everything I did sought your attention." Many of us root for the teams our fathers rooted for because there is an indelible bond, strengthened ever further by blood, among those who live and die with the fortunes of a common athletic team.

For others, baseball represents a simpler time. In most cases, I think that simpler time for which they yearn was really no simpler than today, but it certainly seemed simpler in a pre-Internet age...and with the passing of time, of course, which tends to whitewash every flaw.

In the days before massive youth soccer leagues, baseball was the one sport in which most young men – it was softball for the girls – participated at one level or another. I played through the age of 13 until I could no longer keep up with the fastballs and had no hope of hitting a curveball. More importantly, I became a fan of the game at the age of 9 and remain one to this day.

It is a slow game, some will say, and I don't disagree with them. But "slow" does not equate with "boring." Watching a well-played baseball game is just about the best way I can think of to spend a summer afternoon, even if it takes 3+ hours to play and ends with a 2-1 score.

I bring this up because, as I type, my beloved Cleveland Indians have won an astounding 14 games in a row (the second consecutive season in which they've accomplished this feat). And tonight they go for No. 15 with ace pitcher and Cy Young Award candidate Corey Kluber on the mound.

So many people I come across these days, including my doctor as she poked and prodded me this morning as part of my annual physical, want to talk about the Tribe. Could this be their year? Will they stay healthy? What's up with Jose Ramirez's incredible bat? And his hair, for that matter?

They ask these questions with that note of restrained, even fatalistic, optimism that Cleveland sports fans have perfected. We have been burned in a variety of creatively cruel ways over the years, and there is a part of us that always assumes the worst will happen.

But the important thing is, talking about the Tribe is fun, and it makes us happy in a way. It gives us a few minutes to stop thinking about hurricanes and politics and flag protests and everything else that makes us cry and worry and act viciously toward one another.

There are poor people in this country, no doubt about that, but as comedienne Marsha Warfield said about hunger in the U.S., "It ain't but so bad." The vast majority of us have the essentials we need to live. Most have roofs over their heads and some sort of food on the table.

We have the things our wages can buy us. What we don't have, what perhaps we've never had, is peace. A sense that everything is going to be OK. Maybe that's impossible to have in this (or any) age, so we settle for small glimpses of it. We talk about the things that make us feel good and that remind us that humans have the capacity to do meaningful, inspirational things.

And I include baseball in that. It's just a game, you might say, and you're right. But it's also an escape, albeit temporary, from everything else that weighs on us. It is a way to connect to the part of our collective consciousness that shuts down in the face of worrisome news and constant conflicts and the mortality of this life.

There are bad characters in baseball as in anything. There is greed, there is selfishness, and there is cheating.

But there is also a purity and honesty and beauty there that mostly eludes us as we manage our way through the mundane details of everyday life.

It's purity, honesty and beauty that can be had for the price of a ticket, or even the click of a TV remote.

If acknowledging that simple fact constitutes over-romanticizing baseball, then I can only plead guilty.

But in the end, I'll be back season after season to watch and cheer and fret and fume. I follow other sports, but in the end, it was baseball that was my first love. And she never fails to deliver.