Awesome night card, pt. 39

Sorry, kids. I've just returned from out of town, and there's a fierce pitching duel taking place between my Dodgers and those dastardly Angels on the telly RIGHT NOW. So I'm distracted, and my blogging skills are rusty.

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of good food, children running amok and "Happy Father's Day" salutations. I've been on a computer only long enough to make a quick comment and get a general gist of the latest (1. Make sure your link is dingedcorners.com and 2. Joining Twitter may have its merits, but only if you can follow the mind-numbing logic). So you'll have to excuse me if I'm thinking about family more than cards.

I thought it'd be appropriate to show Mark Leiter as the night card today. A lot of people have forgotten about Leiter, who is the brother of the more famous of the Leiters, former Mets/Marlins/Yankees pitcher Al Leiter. But Mark Leiter touched many people for the way he handled the very public heartbreak of the loss of his 9-month old son, Ryan, to spinal muscular atrophy, a rare children's form of Lou Gehrig's Disease during the spring of 1994.

I did some brief research and came upon a quote, in a Sporting News story about Leiter, which struck me the most on this day. Leiter asks the reporter doing the story whether the article will appear before Father's Day. The reporter says yes.

Leiter then says: "Spend all the time with your kids and enjoy every minute that they're here. Play with them all the time. Give them a lot of happiness, because, before you know it, we're all grown up in a blink of an eye - life is over.

"I love you, Ryan."

My daughter is 11 years old. She is in perfect health. In fact, she is now taller than her grandmother. I am grateful for who she is and for the time I have with her. I hope there are many more years to come.

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there. A life with children is a wonderful thing.

Now, back to business: all you folks on Twitter, I am struggling to grasp this thing. Give me a good reason why I should get an account. Because I can't come up with one myself.

That's it. If you'll excuse me, I have to watch the rest of this game, and catch up on like 200 blog posts.

(If you want to read another Father's Day-like post on this blog, click here. I ramble a little less on that one).