2013高中英语阅读素材：My father’s words 不在场的教诲.docVIP

My father’s words 不在场的教诲 我最终从这种迷失的困境中走了出来，寻得意外的收获：通过写作来表达自己。而直到后来我才发觉，这是我用另一种方式去理解父亲的一个桥梁。这种方式引导着我接近一种新的激情，这种激情是我和父亲共同享有的，但是过去我并不知道。Before they closed my father’s casket, I left him with a gift. After all he had given me, it was the least and best I could do. He passed away the day I got my 1,000th career hit, in the final game of the 2002 season, so at his side I left the ball from my milestone.Besides the surreal and horrifying last moment of seeing him lying in permanent stasis, it was also the first time I could remember giving him a special game ball without him slipping a $10 bill into my hands to congratulate me. His illness kept him out of whatever stadium I was playing in during the latter years of my career, though that didn’t stop him from patting me on the back from afar with a phone call or by what I could best describe as a “spiritual moment,” one when I would feel him sitting on my shoulder advising me while referencing a page out of his psychiatric repertoire.I left baseball in 2005, with a Triple-A contract on the table from the San Diego Padres. I left not for physical reasons — I’d had a torn hamstring tendon in 2003, but it hadn’t affected my speed — but because it was my season for change. So I decided to walk away and once I did, like the vast majority of players, I was lost. It would be the first time since I learned to swing a bat that I would spend an entire summer without ever putting on a uniform. Even if you get a going-away party like the one the Phillies gave me on June 25th, 2005, when I threw out the first pitch of the Philadelphia-Boston game on a national TV, once the last partygoer walks out the door it’s no longer you against that fastball, it is you against yourself.So you swim around trying to figure out what young, retired baseball players do with their lives. For me, the moment was stark without the guiding wisdom of my father, who could communicate with me with just a nod of his head.Since my retirement, I have sear