PORT ARTHUR — Baseball is a game of statistics.

It’s an obvious statement, sure. Just look to all those numbers and stats in each box score printed in this very paper. Still, I'd like to run through some stats first.

This is my third column as a sportswriter for The Port Arthur News and about the 40th I’ve written since I was hired in April.

I have written about sports professionally for six years now.

I still have approximately 248 baseball cards.

I'm able to get to about five live Astros games a year now and watch the rest on TV.

I've listened to Milo Hamilton for about 10,000 hours over the years.

More importantly and topically for today, this is the first Father’s Day I’m spending without my dad.

I understand baseball now through statistics. I seek out newer metrics and newer ways to analyze the team constantly, searching for a more perfect understanding of what goes on around the diamond.

But, that wasn't the first way I came to understand the game. That came from Little League and Dad, who I lost last September after a 5-year battle with ALS.

Every time I reach back to think about baseball, the memories are colored with images of my dad. He got me invested in those 80's Astros teams. He bought me my first pack of Topps baseball cards with the cardboard-tasting gum. He helped teach me how to play and how the game was supposed to be played.

That's not to say there were these unwritten rules passed down like there are in the minor leagues. My dad wasn't close to being a professional player. He was just a lifelong sports fan. He wasn't my coach in little league. Instead, he was the team statistician. He'd help me with my swing, but not by showing me how himself, but by recording my swings in the back yard and then playing it for me on our VCR.

Heck, he even played Nintendo baseball games like Baseball Stars with me, even though I was more interested in making my guys dive into the wall rather than winning the game. He would get mad at me for trying to get into rundowns as soon as I got on base, even though I would force him to throw the ball away eventually or just slide back into first safely. It wasn't real baseball I was learning, but it was fun.

Similarly, he put up with my collecting all the Oakland A's baseball cards because that was my little league team that year. Once I was in high school, he didn't like when I'd rather play Ken Griffey Baseball rather than watching an actual game on TV. Still, he would argue with me just the same about players, talk about trades and read the newspaper with me just the same.

I still miss talking about baseball with him. In college, we would often call each other during the middle of Astros games to complain about a bad call or in triumph over a big home run. We’d discuss the draft and this hot-shot young pitcher named Roy Oswalt. We’d argue about a lot, since he was more of an old-fashioned sports fans than I am. In our fantasy football league, he only wanted to pick players he could root for. Sorry, Terrell Owens. I’d just try to win no matter what, even if it meant picking a Peyton Manning.

As time went on, those things changed. I started reading more stuff on the "internet." Michael Lewis published Moneyball, which I read and loved. I started tracking the minor leagues voraciously and my perceptions of the sport changed ever so slightly from my dad's. We could still talk about the game, but we were different fans. We thought about the game in different ways.

Without all those arguments with my dad, I wouldn't be half the writer I am now. When I think about why I love baseball, I always think about the Astrodome, Glenn Davis and Little League.

That's all thanks to my dad.