Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood

by Michael Lewis

Never having had good habits myself, I was poorly situated to argue the point, and if I had, I wouldn’t have been believed. My wife was raised in a military household that left her in full possession of the martial virtues. I was raised in a home where it was possible for me every couple of weeks to steal a jumbo sack of Nestlé’s chocolate-chip cookies from the kitchen and secrete them under my bed at night without anyone being the wiser for it. I was meant to be six-foot-three and make straight A’s through high school but as a result of skipping dinner and instead eating a dozen Nestlé’s chocolate-chip cookies every night I wound up five-foot-ten with a D in biology my sophomore year. I could see my wife’s point. She had spent two and a half years drilling her better qualities into her first child only to see them sucked out in three and a half weeks of prolonged exposure to me. She was the ace of the pitching staff who had shut down the opposing batters for eight innings only to watch the closer blow the game in the ninth. (I’ve had baseball on my mind.)