A few weeks before his death, the last conversation I had with my grandfather was about baseball.

There has always been baseball.

It seemed fitting that would be our last conversation, after all, the man named one of his son's Connie Mack in honor of Philadelphia A's manager Cornelius McGillicuddy.

This was back when they played World Series games in the afternoon and the A's were pitted against the Reds in the fall classic.

The question was a simple one, “Who won today?”

It was a question posed as he lay in a hospital bed in Ahoskie, before they decided to transfer him to Chapel Hill, where a week or so later he died.

“The A's,” I said.

He seemed happy at this response, because, as a young Albanian immigrant coming to this country through Ellis Island, he moved to Philadelphia and worked concessions at Shibe Park ages before the notion to move the A's to Oakland became reality.

There has always been baseball.

I look fondly back at this moment and although the 1972 series stretched out to the full seven games, I feel somehow he knew his beloved A's would pull through.

Baseball was always my first love, the trading cards, games in the backyard, broken windows, a less than stellar Little League career and rushing home from school in the fall, when memory makes the air seem crisper and cleaner, to catch an afternoon World Series game.

My first trip to California to visit my mom's uncles included a trip with them to Chavez Ravine — and every bar in between where I was fed Shirley Temple's before game time — to see the Dodgers take on the Padres, hence my alignment with the team ever since.

As I get ready for this evening's crucial matchup with the Cardinals, I am reminded, however, of my rocky ride with baseball in light of the horror stories of steroid abuse and labor clashes.

But, there has always been baseball.

An incredible documentary by Ken Burns rekindled my interest in the game, taking me back to a time when, as a child, I was almost the unofficial mascot of the Chowan College Braves baseball team, attending as many of their home games as I could and once being invited to sit in the dugout with the players.

This is the sports side of me you don't read about much and some, as one did, will accuse me of being a bandwagon fan just because the Dodgers stand a slim chance of making it to the big series.

That would not be the case, however, because there has always been baseball, watching Ken Griffey Jr. yank two homers to the hotel level of SkyDome — now the Rogers Center — on a trip to Toronto; trips to several minor league parks and staying up late the past few weeks to rebuild the bridge that often got flooded in the wake of baseball scandal.

Now, however, as I am wiser, I see the links that baseball can create and I am forever grateful that the final conversation I had with my grandfather made him happy.

There will always be baseball — Lance Martin