"Grandpa?" came the voice on the other end of the phone.

"Hello Elijah!"

"Grandpa, did you know that Wednesday, July 18 is Jay Bruce Bobblehead Night at Great American Ball Park?"

Great American Ball Park is the field that the Cincinnati Reds call home.  Cincinnati is the city of my birth and the Reds have claimed the loyalties of men in my family for five generations-- the two before me and the two that follow.  Jay Bruce, young slugger for the Reds, is Elijah's favorite player on his grandfather's hometown team.  A bobblehead of the favorite player of an eight year old boy is the Holy Grail of any summer.  No matter that both Eli and his grandfather live in Connecticut, 750 miles from Great American Ball Park.

"Why no, Eli.  I didn't know July 18 was Jay Bruce Bobblehead Night at GABP."

"Well it is.  The first 25,000 fans in attendance that night receive a free Jay Bruce Bobblehead."

"Wow!" I replied.

A pause follows.  "Is there anything else you want to ask me Elijah?"

"Grandpa, would you please get me a Jay Bruce Bobblehead?"

"Sure, Eli.  I'd be happy to!"

I knew Eli had been told by his father, my oldest, that I would be in Cincinnati that week to help my parents adjust to life challenges as my father continues to struggle with dementia and a newly diagnosed lymphoma.  A trip to the ballpark on a mission for my grandson would be a welcome respite from the stresses  of clearing out a shed, garage, and workshop, along with sorting through jumbled financial records and a trip to the out-patient surgery center.  Not to mention visiting nursing homes, trying to find a suitable facility for my father to find the care he needs.

It was my father who first took me to old Crosley Field to see my first Reds' game when I was a young boy.  He taught me the game he played until he was well into his thirties and umpired until he was deep into his sixties.  He handed down to me a passion for the game and a devotion for the hometown Reds.

When my dad had been a senior in high school he and three of his buddies had slept in sleeping bags on the sidewalk the night before opening day of the new baseball season to be first in line to buy tickets in the bleachers at old Crosley.  I have seen the picture clipped from the Cincinnati Post recording that night-long vigil.  Then, when I was a senior, three of my friends and I skipped school to see the Reds on Opening Day at their new baseball palace--Riverfront Stadium, home of The Big Red Machine.

Eli has never been to Riverfront.  The team and the city had torn down that "modern" stadium before he was born.  But his father took in his first Reds game there when he was 20 months old.  I don't mean that we just took Mark along to a game when he could barely walk.  He drank in the entire game, his eyes locked onto the action from the moment we moved off of the concourse and took our seats.  He cried in protest when we had to leave in the 8th inning to take him back to the car to change his diaper.

Vin Scully, legendary bard of baseball broadcasters, now in his mid-eighties and still calling Dodgers' games, was asked what is it about baseball that so captures the hearts of American males.  "Dreams and memories," replied Scully.  "When we're young baseball fills our dreams.  When we're old, baseball animates our memories."

I was trying to animate my father's memory that third week in July, sitting next to him in my parents' family room.  We were watching the Reds' game on television.  My dad would "tune in" to the action on the screen intermittently.  Then we would exchange small talk about the last pitch thrown or some play in the field.  I thought I might venture across the bridge of years past and and probe some shared memories.

"Dad, do you remember Vada Pinson?"  Pinson was the fleet center fielder for the Reds in the sixties, when I was a boy and we first began to share our passion for the home town team.

"No, not very well," my dad said.  "I don't remember him much."

"Well, what about Ernie Lombardi?"  Lombardi had been a great hitting catcher for the Reds' pennant winners of 1939 and 1940 when my dad was a young boy.  I knew about the great Lombardi from devouring my dad's boyhood scrapbooks that he kept from those championship seasons.

"Now you're going way back," he said with a smile of remembrance for those bright memories of boyhood.

Baseball memories.  Points of connection between generations.  Not much is left to share when dementia has eroded the mind so severely that conversation is a frustrating impossibility.

The Reds are riding high this magical season of 2012.  First place.  With today's technology I can sit with Eli right beside me and together we can watch Reds' live game action streaming on my laptop.  Every win is a celebration.  Every hoot and high-five a connection across the generations.

I got the bobblehead for Elijah on July 18th.  Or did I get it for me?  Most likely for both of us--dreams for him and shared memories for the two of us.  For that future someday when he begins another conversation with a question.

"Hey grandpa, do you remember Jay Bruce?"