My uncle gave my grandfather’s seats to his boss at the last game ever played in that ballpark, then handed Grandpa a $14 ticket to the upper deck and said, “He won’t know the difference. He can’t remember what inning it is.” He’d forgotten one thing about those seats. His son hadn’t.
My grandfather had sat in Section 112, Row D, seats 7 and 8, since the spring of 1979.
Seat 8 was my grandmother’s.
She died in 2019. Every January after that he still mailed the team a check for both seats, $3,180, so her seat could stay empty and hold his scorebook.
So when they announced the old park in Harrisburg would close for good after this season, there was only one game left that mattered to him.
The last one.
I drove him. He’s 88 and his knees are shot, but he wore the red windbreaker he’s worn to every home opener I can remember.
And he made my cousin Hardin carry the backpack.
That backpack is older than Hardin. It’s faded to the color of a dish sponge, and it holds forty-seven years of scorebooks.
Hardin is fifteen and barely talks. He just walked next to Grandpa with it hanging off one shoulder.
Uncle Bryant was waiting for us at Gate C.
He had a man with him in a golf shirt that still had the fold lines from the package.
“Dad, this is Mr. Platt,” Uncle Bryant said. “My regional. He’s never seen a game here.”
Grandpa shook his hand. Grandpa shakes everybody’s hand.
A guy dressed as a hot dog went past us blowing a kazoo.
Then Uncle Bryant held out a paper ticket. Upper deck, Section 310, fourteen dollars printed in the corner.
“You’ve seen about three thousand games, Dad,” he said. “Let the man have one.”
Grandpa looked at that ticket for a long time.
“Seven and eight are mine,” he said.
“They’re on my phone, Dad. They’ve been on my phone since you couldn’t work the app.”
That was news to me.
Two Thanksgivings ago Uncle Bryant offered to help with the tickets. Grandpa handed over his phone, and as far as I knew that was the end of it.
“He can’t do 310,” I said. “That’s sixty steps. Look at him.”
“Don’t start,” Uncle Bryant said. “He won’t know the difference. He can’t remember what inning it is.”
Mr. Platt laughed like it was a joke he was supposed to laugh at.
We went down to 112 anyway, because Grandpa just started walking and nobody was going to stop him.
The usher has known him for twenty years. He said “Mr. Ehrlich” and touched the brim of his cap.
Mr. Platt sat down in seat 8.
Grandma’s seat.
He put his beer on the armrest where Grandpa always keeps his pencil.
Grandpa stood in the aisle with the scorebook in both hands.
“That one’s my wife’s,” he said.
“Sorry, chief,” Mr. Platt said. “Your boy said it was open.”
People in Row E were turning around now. A woman behind us lowered her phone.
Uncle Bryant leaned toward Mr. Platt and didn’t bother keeping it down.
“He still thinks it’s 1985. Last week he called me by my brother’s name.”
My dad. Gone eleven years.
Then Uncle Bryant reached over and took the scorebook right out of Grandpa’s hands.
Just took it.
He flipped it open and turned it toward his boss like a menu.
“Look at this. He writes Mom’s initials in the box for seat 8. EVERY game.”
He tapped the page with one finger.
“She’s been dead seven years, Dad. NOBODY is sitting with you.”
The whole row went quiet.
Somebody in Row F said, “Jesus Christ, man.”
Grandpa didn’t answer. His chin was going. He held the back of seat 7 with both hands and stood as straight as he could.
I opened my mouth, and Hardin stepped past me.
He swung the backpack off his shoulder and set it on seat 7.
“Dad,” he said.
Uncle Bryant didn’t even look at him. “Not now.”
Hardin unzipped the front pocket. He didn’t have to look inside. He’d been in there before.
He pulled out the thick envelope the team mails every January, and a second sheet folded in thirds behind it.
“Grandpa didn’t forget anything,” Hardin said. “He gave me these in April. He said you’d try something.”
Uncle Bryant’s face changed.
“Give me that,” he said.
Hardin held it up instead, high enough for Row E and Row F and the usher to see.
“YOU WANT TO TELL MR. PLATT WHOSE NAME IS ON IT,” he said, “or do I read it out loud?”
Mr. Platt set his beer down on the concrete.
Uncle Bryant was still holding my grandfather’s scorebook, open to the page with my grandmother’s initials on it.
Then Hardin unfolded the second sheet.
Seat 7
It was a printout from the ticket office, on team letterhead, dated April 9.
Hardin read the top out loud. “Account holder, Norbert Ehrlich. Since 1979. Additional user, Bryant Ehrlich.”
Under that was a column of dates. Some of them had been gone over with yellow highlighter, hard, the way a kid does it.
“August fourteenth,” Hardin read. “Seats seven and eight. Transferred by additional user. Resale. Two hundred ninety dollars.”
Uncle Bryant laughed once. “That’s the app. It sells whatever nobody’s using. It does it by itself.”
I reached over and took the scorebook out of his hand. He let it go. He was looking at the paper.
I closed the book and gave it back to Grandpa. He held it flat against the front of the red windbreaker.
“How many yellow ones?” Mr. Platt said.
“Eleven,” Hardin said. “Four thousand one hundred and ten dollars.”
A man in Row E said “Eleven” to the woman next to him, like he was checking he’d heard it.
The scoreboard was running an ad for a dentist in Camp Hill.
I knew that date. I didn’t need the paper for it.
August fourteenth was the night Grandpa called me from Gate C.
Gate C, August 14
It was a Thursday. He called at 6:52, because he told me the time before he told me anything else.
“It says this ticket has been transferred,” he said. “The girl at the turnstile says it’s not mine.”
I was thirty-five minutes away. I drove it in twenty-eight.
He was on the bench by Gate C with the backpack on his knees, the same backpack, carrying it himself back then. The anthem was already over. You could hear the crowd through the wall.
He didn’t say much in the car. He turned the radio to the game and took out the book and a pencil and scored the first inning off the broadcast, sitting in my passenger seat.
He does that on nights he can’t go. Scores it off the radio, puts a little R in the top corner of the page.
I didn’t look at what he wrote. I was looking at the road and thinking about how much he’d slowed down that year.
The next morning Uncle Bryant called me.
“He opened last year’s ticket. He scrolled to the wrong one and panicked. Don’t make it a thing with him, okay? He’s slipping.”
By Labor Day that was the story. By Thanksgiving my mother was saying it. I said it too. I said it at the table, with Grandpa sitting right there passing the rolls.
I’m the one who put him on that app in the first place. In 2018, the year the team stopped mailing paper tickets, I set up his account at his kitchen table and made the password Grandma’s birthday and 112. He never used it once. Two Thanksgivings ago he handed his phone to Bryant, and Bryant said he’d keep an eye on it.
At Christmas Grandpa told me there’d be a bigger envelope than usual in January.
“Forty-seven years gets you something,” he said.
I figured he meant a plaque.
And last Wednesday Uncle Bryant texted me. Can you drive Dad Tuesday 10am, Front St. Just a checkup. Don’t make it a thing.
I sent back a thumbs-up.
In 112, Mr. Platt stood up out of my grandmother’s seat.
The usher’s radio
He didn’t go anywhere. He just stood in Row D with his hands at his sides like a man waiting for somebody to tell him what row he was in.
Uncle Bryant turned around to Row E and talked to them, not to us.
“My father has memory problems. Okay? I’m sorry you all have to see this. The kid’s fifteen. He found a printout and he’s been listening to an old man.”
Then he took his phone out and held it up the way Hardin had held up the paper.
“Seven and eight. Scanned at the gate. Valid. That’s how tickets work now.”
I went up the steps to the usher. He was standing at the top of the aisle with his radio.
“Can you get somebody from guest services down here?”
“Ma’am, I’ve known your grandfather a long time.” He looked at Grandpa, not me. “But if it scanned, it’s whoever’s phone it’s on. That’s the rule. I don’t make it.”
“Call them.”
He called them. The radio said something with a lot of static in it.
“They say the phone is the ticket,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t sound sorry enough to do anything.
So I did the thing I knew how to do. I took out my phone and opened the team app and logged in as Norbert Ehrlich, Grandma’s birthday and 112, the way I’d typed it at his kitchen table eight years ago.
Incorrect password.
I typed it again, slower.
Incorrect password. 2 attempts remaining.
Uncle Bryant was watching me over Mr. Platt’s shoulder. He didn’t even have to come up the steps.
“I changed it two years ago,” he said. “Somebody in this family had to.”
Front Street
Mr. Platt cleared his throat.
He’d been quiet this whole time, the kind of quiet a man is when he’s working out how much of a thing is about to land on him.
“Bryant,” he said. “You told me these were going to be yours.”
“They are going to be.”
“You told me in writing. You said the account goes over once his doctor’s letter comes in. You said October.”
Uncle Bryant laughed. “Don, can we not do this here?”
“I told four clients I had a box downtown for opening day. You said your dad’s number was single digits.”
I didn’t know what that meant. Hardin did. He reached into the front pocket again and handed me the January envelope without a word.
It was thick because it wasn’t a bill. The bill was in there, sure. The $3,180, stamped Received in red. But behind it was a booklet with the new park on the front, the one going up downtown by the river.
Relocation Priority. Account holders of record will select seats at the new ballpark in order of tenure.
And a card clipped to the inside cover.
Norbert Ehrlich. Selection number: 9.
Nine. Out of every season ticket holder in the city.
Under it, in smaller print: Seats may be selected only by the account holder of record or a legally authorized representative.
Forty-seven years gets you something.
“Selection opens November thirtieth,” Mr. Platt said. He said it to the booklet, like he’d read the same page. “That’s what you told me. You’d be the representative by then.”
“I’m his son,” Uncle Bryant said. “Who else is going to be?”
I took my phone back out. I didn’t open the app this time. I opened my texts and scrolled up to last Wednesday and hit the address in his message, the one I’d sent a thumbs-up to without looking at.
The map came up with a name pinned on it.
Harrisburg Memory and Aging Center. 400 Front Street.
Inside the back cover
I held the phone out so Grandpa could see it. I don’t know why. Maybe because he was the only one in the row who hadn’t seen anything yet.
He looked at it a long time. Like he’d looked at the $14 ticket.
Then he said, “Hardin. The two books.”
Hardin went into the main pocket this time. He came out with two scorebooks, last year’s and this year’s, and handed last year’s to Grandpa first. Grandpa didn’t need to look for the page. His thumb went straight to it.
August 14.
The R in the top corner. Every at-bat of a nine-inning game scored off the radio, in pencil, small and neat. And down the margin in the same pencil:
Gate C 6:52. “Transferred.” Called her. Home by radio.
Next to it, in blue ink, different pressure, written later:
Sold by B. $290. Office, April 9.
He turned the pages for me. Hardin held the printout next to them. June. July. Two in September. Every R page had a blue line on it, and every blue line had a price, and every price matched one of Hardin’s yellow ones.
He’d scored eleven games from his kitchen table that his son had sold out from under him. And he’d written it all down as it happened, because he writes everything down.
“He writes everything,” Uncle Bryant said. “That’s the whole problem, Don. He writes in a book. That’s not proof of anything.”
Grandpa handed last year’s back to Hardin and opened this year’s to the inside of the back cover.
There was a line of letters and numbers on it in blue ink. Under it: Office reset. Apr 9. Under that: Hardin carries. B. may stop on his own.
“He said if you were going to stop, you’d stop,” Hardin said. He was talking to the concrete. “He said he’d give you all season.”
Somebody down at the field said play ball over the speakers. The first pitch went in. Nobody in Row D turned around for it.
Grandpa looked out at the field for a second. Then back at his son.
“Top of the first, Bryant. Nobody out,” he said. “You sitting or going up?”
Seven and eight
I typed the letters and numbers off the back cover into my phone.
The app opened on a picture of the old park and Welcome back, Norbert.
Uncle Bryant came down the row then, past Mr. Platt, and put his hand out flat, like I was supposed to give him the phone.
“Don’t you do that. Don’t you DARE do that. You know who drives him to the pharmacy? Me. You know who did his gutters? Me. You come by twice a month with soup and now you’re the family? Three thousand dollars a year so a dead woman’s chair can hold a notebook, and I’M the one with the problem?”
I went into Manage Account. There was a list with two names on it.
“That money went right back into this family. You think I took it to Atlantic City? It went into Hardin’s braces. Ask him. Ask him what his teeth cost.”
Hardin didn’t say anything.
“Your father would be sick watching this,” Uncle Bryant said to me. “Sick.”
I looked at Grandpa.
“Go on,” Grandpa said.
I hit Remove next to Bryant Ehrlich. The phone asked if I was sure. It said any tickets held by this user would return to the account.
I hit Remove again.
Uncle Bryant still had his own phone in his other hand, still turned out toward Row E from before. The screen went white and then gray.
This ticket is no longer available.
On my phone, two tickets slid in under Upcoming. Section 112, Row D, seats 7 and 8. Today.
The usher came down three steps. He’d heard all of it. Everybody had.
“Sir,” he said to Mr. Platt. “I’m going to need to see your ticket.”
Mr. Platt reached down for his beer and then didn’t pick it up. He left it on the concrete.
“Monday, Bryant,” he said. “Eight-thirty. Bring the letter you were going to get.” He went up the steps sideways, past the usher, and was gone into the tunnel.
Uncle Bryant didn’t follow him right away. He stood there with the dead phone and the $14 ticket still folded in his other hand from the gate.
Then he found the face he’d come with.
“Fine. Fine. You know what number nine is worth, Dad? You know what people pay for that? I had it handled. I had it set up so it went somewhere. You’re going to sit in a box downtown alone with Mom’s notebook till you die in it.”
Grandpa didn’t answer that. He’d already answered.
“And Tuesday,” Grandpa said. “Front Street. I’ll go. I’ll bring the books.”
“I’ll drive him,” I said.
Uncle Bryant turned on Hardin last. “Get your stuff. We’re leaving. You’re walking to the car.”
“I’m going home with Grandpa,” Hardin said.
“Then you stay there.”
The usher said “Sir” one more time, and that was the end of it. Uncle Bryant dropped the paper ticket on seat 8 and went up the aisle.
Grandpa sat down in seat 7. It took him a while. He set the pencil on the armrest where it goes.
Then he looked at Hardin and patted seat 8.
“Sit,” he said. “Somebody’s got to keep the book.”
Hardin sat in his grandmother’s seat. Grandpa opened this year’s book across both their laps and pointed at the box. Hardin wrote her initials in it.
There were two seats. I picked the $14 ticket up off seat 8.
“Go on,” Grandpa said, when he saw what I was holding. “I’ll tell you the score after.”
I climbed to 310. I counted the steps. Sixty-one.
January
The envelope came the second week of January, thick again, the new park on the front.
Grandpa had it open on his kitchen table when I got there with the soup. The letter from Front Street was on the fridge under a magnet shaped like a baseball. He’d made me read it to him twice in the car in November, and then he’d asked for a copy for the fridge.
Hardin was at the table in the gray hoodie with the backpack hanging off his chair. He comes Saturdays now. He takes the bus.
Uncle Bryant didn’t come at Christmas. Hardin brought a card from him that nobody had signed.
The seats downtown are Section 104, Row C. Grandpa picked them ninth, on November thirtieth, on my phone, with Hardin holding the map. The check for the season was bigger this year, a lot bigger. He wrote it out slow, like always.
In the back of the 2026 book there’s a $14 stub from Section 310, taped in by Hardin, under the last page of the last game ever scored at the old park. Two kinds of handwriting on that page.
Grandpa tore the check off and held it up so I could see the memo line.
104 — C — 7, 8, 9.
“Nine’s yours,” he said. “Eight’s the boy’s.”
If this one got to you, send it to somebody who still writes things down in a book nobody else reads.
Family members making decisions that hurt the people closest to them show up in the fight over a $3,850 repair bill and a brother’s wife claiming the deed was already signed. For another jaw-dropping betrayal, read about a fiancé, a condo key, and 112 people waiting outside.
