Some Fatherly Advice

My dad has taught me a lot. Some of his best teachings have been the less serious lessons.

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher assigned our class a straightforward writing assignment. All the boys were tasked with writing about a man who inspired them, and all the girls were to do the same except with a woman. Our teacher told us she would then hang the essays around the room for our middle school’s open house, which was a night when students brought their families to see what they had accomplished throughout the year.

As a ten-year-old boy, the most important thing in my life at the time was Little League baseball. The year was 2008, which was also the apogee of Major League Baseball’s Steroid Era. As a pre-teen, I hardly understood what steroids were, but I knew that cheating was bad and many of my favorite baseball players were being accused of taking steroids to cheat.

Not Albert Pujols, though. Arguably the best position player of the 2000s, Pujols was in the midst of his second Most Valuable Player award-winning seas…