Saturday night a friend, and a brother from another mother, reminded me that it was almost un-American if you didn’t watch the World Series years ago. That was while we exchanged blow-byblow texts during the fourth game when the LA Dodgers came undone in the ninth inning and made it 2-2 with the Tamapa Bay Rays.

It had been ages since I’d watched a World Series, and I’m surprised at the different, and unusual, pitching styles compared to years ago when I watched them on TV with my Daddy.

“She’s just like her Daddy,” Momma always told people.

I was one of those kids who liked whatever Daddy liked. That meant I loved baseball, TV and chocolate cake, and hated lemon pie, hominy and turnips.

In those olden days the games were in the afternoon, and Daddy called the school to check me out during my sophomore year so we could watch the series.

It was understood that Momma would never know.

Just thinking about those days makes me want to smell the smoke from Daddy’s pipe, and the black shoe polish from his size 13 shoes propped up on an old stool as we watched the 1960 series.

I want the Dodgers to win this year because Daddy was a Dodger fan back in those days, I told my text buddy Sunday night during game five.

He mentioned colorful Casey Stengel and said back in the 1950s that the Dodgers played the Yankees who had Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra.

“Ooops! Maybe Daddy was a Yankee fan,” I wrote back:

“You just made me laugh outloud!” he wrote.

OK, so I don’t know the Dodgers from the Yankees, but I still want the Dodgers to win this year.

Clayton Kershaw did a great job of pitching Sunday night in the Dodger win. He and catcher Austin Barnes managed to mess up Manuel Margot’s steal at home. It was a beautiful play, and fun to watch, over and over.

It’s a new world to watch baseball with the replays to see if players were tagged out, and also that neat little box on the screen that shows the strike zone.

I also love that the stats are on the bottom right of the screen.

Daddy would have loved that too. That way he wouldn’t have to remind me how many strikes and balls the batter had, on every single play. He’d also be surprised that I learned to love lemon meringue pie, and now 60 years later that I still have his old foot stool.