It didn't help that an Al Qaeda alert had just been mentioned on the morning news, it didn't help that our flight was delayed for more than a hour, and it really didn't help that our three assigned seats were 13A, 13B and 13C.

"We're in row 13!" he wailed as we walked away from the luggage checkpoint.

And that's how our father-son bonding trip began. Just the three of us—the two boys and me—off for nine days of baseball, baseball and more baseball. Trouble was, the trip almost ended before it ever began.

"We can't fly in row 13," said the oldest. "What's next? We'll probably walk under a ladder, or a couple of black cats will run across our path."

"There are no cats in the airport terminal," I said, hoping to calm his fears. "And row 13 is just another row on the airplane."

He wasn't about to be consoled. He was a nervous wreck as he boarded the plane for the overnight trip to Chicago. He tentatively took his place in 13B, but when the flight attendant offered him a seat in a different row of the sparsely filled airbus, he jumped at the chance to move.

Trouble was, his new seat was located in row 11—the emergency exit row ... now it was my turn to be a nervous wreck.

"If you're seated in an exit row, you may be asked to assist the crew in an emergency," announced the pilot as we taxied down the runway. Great. The guy on board the most afraid of impending doom is now the guy we all have to count on to get us out of the plane safely in an emergency. There was definitely something wrong with that picture.

"Now, be sure you don't open that door unless they ask you to!" I cautioned. But that wasn't a real concern. His hands were gripping the arms of his seat so tightly that he couldn't open his Diet Pepsi can, let alone a door.

Thank goodness he relaxed enough to doze off for a while on the cross-country flight so his brother and I could get a little rest.

And speaking of his brother, the youngest had his own problems. He missed his girlfriend so much that he was on his cell phone calling her from the San Jose airport before we ever left, from the layover in Chicago, from the North Carolina airport that was our final destination—and every 20 or 30 minutes after that for the duration of our trip. The cost for the vacation is going to pale in comparison to his cell bill next month!

The trip was getting off to one heck of a bad start. We traveled the red-eye to Chicago, waited through a two-hour layover before catching a connecting flight to Raleigh, N.C., drove from one end of North Carolina to the other in a rental car, then endured a 13-hour bus trip (yes, I said bus trip) to Cincinnati—and by the time we entered Cincy's Great American Ballpark we were hardly speaking. So much for bonding!

But then, there it was—baseball. And all of the frustrations of the first couple of days seemed to melt away. So much so, in fact, that it reminded me of that 1960s novelty song by Alan Sherman, "A Letter from Camp." You remember, "Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh, here I am at, Camp Granada ... "

Anyway, it ends this way: "Wait a minute, it stopped hailing; guys are swimming, guys are sailing; playing baseball, gee that's better; Muddah, Fadduh kindly disregard this letter."

Thanks to baseball, things got better. And the trip would have ended happily ever after ... if we hadn't had to fly home!

Want to talk? Call me at 408.354.3110, ext. 31, or drop me a note at dsparrer@svcn.com.