Making it Home – Life Lessons from a Season of Little League

By Brandy Aguilar & Jordan Spurgeon

Whether you are a fan of baseball or not, Teresa Strasser’s new book, “Making it Home – Life Lessons From a Season of Little League,” is sure to be a home run. The book is about baseball, grief and a family moving forward. The award-winning writer and TV personality sat down with us to talk about her journey. 

“’Making it Home’ follows one single season of Little League baseball that’s just 16 games that I spent watching my oldest son play with my dad,” Strasser said. “The season after my brother died of cancer. He was 47 and then my mom died just four months later.”

Strasser and her dad, Nelson, were grieving very differently.

“I wanted to talk about my brother. I went to actual grief groups and dropped out. I tried everything – Buddhism, Judaism, meditation. My dad never wanted to talk about my brother and didn’t have a single picture out,” Strasser said.

Baseball is where Strasser and her dad met in the middle.

“I remember at that first practice; my son was playing first base. My brother was a lefty. My son’s a lefty and my dad looked at him and he said Mugsy, and my brother’s name was Morgan and we called him Mugsy, and he said, ‘Mugsy never missed a grounder at first base,’ and that was the first time I heard my dad say my brother’s name,” Strasser said.
“And then he took a beat and he said, ‘You got to play the bounce, don’t let the bounce play you.’ And I knew at that moment that he was talking about not just baseball, but about life, about grief, about how he was getting through it. He was trying to play the bounce.”

Strasser said that sitting next to her dad at every baseball game was their grief support group.

“So, this was a pew in a church or a synagogue for us,” Strasser said. “This is where we prayed, and we prayed for a win, and this is where we grieved. We grieved for losses.

“What I love about baseball as a metaphor or as a framework for a story about childhood, about loss, about family dysfunction and trauma, and what I love about baseball just in general is for me, there is no sport that has redemption more baked into it,” Strasser continued. 

“A baseball game could last forever, technically. So, in that way, there is so much hope. You could be on two strikes and hit a home run. Your team could be down 10 runs and come back and win and I’ve seen that happen in Little League. It happens, so there is so much hope for redemption in baseball and I feel that is true in terms of our family,” Strasser said.

“I think something that happened the season that I wrote about ‘Making it Home,’ my dad had always been a ne’er-do-well, but he became a hero to me because he could enjoy a baseball game one minute and be in the world and find joy for a team and he could also scream out into the night about his grief, and he could be two things at once,” she continued.

Strasser was nervous to show her dad the book because of all the rough stuff she talked about growing up.

“I was nervous he was not going to like how he came across,” Strasser said. “He loved the book. He said there is nothing more important than art and then he definitely wanted to know who would play him in the movie. 

“The best way that anyone has described grief to me is that fresh grief is like a bright light. It’s right in your face and you can’t see anything else,” Strasser continued. “You’re blinded to everything else and you really can’t be a part of the world and over time that light gets farther and farther away and makes room for other things, and for my dad and I, baseball was one of those things.”

Strasser has learned that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is no timeline and no way you’re supposed to feel. 

“I hope people take that away from ‘Making it Home’ because certainly I didn’t expect Little League to be the way that my dad and I walked through our grief, but we’re in this mutual foxhole that was the sidelines of Little League and we rode out so many highs and lows together and at the end of that season, I knew how to be with my dad,” Strasser said. “I knew how to forgive my dad. I knew how to tolerate my dad and I knew that I even looked up to my dad.”

“Making it Home – Life Lessons From a Season of Little League” is on sale at bookstores now.