As a child, I was not fast or coordinated or interested in anything that involved chasing, catching or otherwise playing ball. But in the long, cold and gloomy spring of 2020, I found myself the mother of an 8-year-old son who wanted nothing more than to play ball. My husband was game, but Will’s appetite for catch was voracious. American film and literature are threaded through with stories of fathers and sons playing ball, from Donald Hall’s essays “Fathers Playing Catch With Sons” to a father appearing on the baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams,” transcending death to participate in a game of catch with his son. But as I picked up a glove, the imagined maleness of the game offered me a certain freedom.

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Persons: Hitler, Donald Hall’s, ”, Will Locations: Germany