One of my favorite musicals since it arrived on the stage scene in 1964, and hit the Big Screen in 1971, is Fiddler on the Roof, the story of a poor Jewish family struggling to maintain their religious beliefs and teachings in a settlement of Imperial Russia set around 1905, about the same time as the Russian Revolution. It is a tale based on a real-life milkman who author Sholem Aleichem, writer of a series of Yiddish short stories titled Tevye and his Daughters, once met somewhere 1894 and 1914, in a small Jewish-only settlement.

When the story became a musical, the opening one-word titled song laid the foundation of the story being told by Tevye, and was the theme for the entire play, then movie. That one word was Tradition.

As the story began, Tevye, the village milkman was hurriedly walking his lame horse to his last few delivery stops, before sunset, which would have signaled the beginning of the Sabbath traditions celebrated by the Jews in the fictitious village of Anatevka. As he walked along, he began a one-person, part humorous, part factual, part happy, and part educational narration with the audience watching the play/movie about his village, his family, other important people they shared life with in the v1llage, and the traditions, trials, and tribulations of their lives there.

Those first ten minutes of the production explained much about the way families and villagers, assumed roles regarding what papas did, what mamas did, what sons and daughters did, to make their lives work the way they did back in that time. It explained the roles of some of the important people of the village including the Rabbi, Match Maker, Butcher, Milkman, the only villager who could read, the village crier, and more. It explained the traditions of men always wearing prayer shawls, the tradition of men keeping their head covered, the traditions of Sabbath, of arranged marriages for daughters (and Tevye had five daughters), and never being able to marry outside their faith. This particular story also dealt with things changing at that time, and the struggles in Tevye’s mind when his three oldest daughters challenged some of their faith’s traditions, which created certain conundrums for Tevye, and how to explain his giving in, and turning his back on his traditions to his wife. It dealt with the Russian Revolution, and the roles taken by some who were rebelling at a great risk to them.

So, as Tevye so emphatically voiced a few times in Fiddler, I’ve occasionally turned my head toward the sky and pointed both my index fingers and eyes toward the heavens, silently screaming to the powers above, “Tradition!”

Growing up, I learned a lot from my parents. They had certain ways they did things. They became traditions. There were holidays, picnic outings, church traditions, and more. We had a small garden in the backyard, which Dad enjoyed tending. He was a proud veteran and got involved in veteran celebrations throughout the year. He loved planting marigolds alongside the house. He loved barbecuing hamburgers, hot dogs, etc., and was meticulous in how he prepared the coals for grilling. He had a way of budgeting the household finances, based on several envelopes and an empty cigar box. At St. James School, when we paid a quarter for a home-cooked school lunch, Dad would set up three small empty metal film cans with screw tops, filled with ten quarters in each, one each for Sandy, Lou, and me, and told us to grab one quarter a day to use for lunch. He’d refill them every two weeks as each could hold ten quarters. He had special things he did, and how he did them, as we decorated for Christmas, which were yearly repeated, and made me consider them as traditions. He even had an alternative method of attaching stamps to large numbers of Christmas cards to their envelopes without having to lick them individually, as there weren’t self-sticking stamps back then. There were many other “traditions” Dad shared as we grew up. As he did things, I took mental notes of how he seldomly waivered from how he did them. It was almost as if he did things in traditional ways, not just “if they ain’t, broke, don’t fix ’em” ways, and guess what? It appears I’ve taken a page from Dad, creating some traditions of my own that I’ve developed over my lifetime. Mom’s traditions included always having something ready to serve if company paid us a visit, and feeding anyone who came to the house for repairs or deliveries around meal time.

I had certain ways I did things as a kid, teenager, and a young, middle-aged, and now as a geriatric adult (as I prefer to be called rather than senior citizen.) Some I did as a teacher, pretty much doing the same things, in the same ways, in the same order, as I arrived at school each day and performed my “before students arrived” routine, long before other staff members were in the building. I was true to that routine a very high percentage of times, which made me feel, and later believe, that those were some of the self-made traditions, I “invented,” as Rocky Balboa might have said.

As a baseball manager and coach on many levels, I never stepped on foul lines anytime I had to go out onto the field, after the game started. Some call that superstitious, but that was my tradition. The same went for not washing my uniform after winning, and arranging the pieces of my uniform precisely, if we did win, so I knew which socks went on which feet, which ones I put on in which order, all the way up to my hat. Superstitions? Maybe, but again, they were my traditions.

Another favorite tradition I love is bringing baseballs to Cleveland games and looking for a youngster with their baseball glove standing in the ticket line, and walking up and giving that little girl, or boy, a brand-new baseball. The tradition of that began as Jon and I would always find a spot to have a catch before a Cleveland game we were attending. Now that Jon can’t come to games often due to job and distance, I’m hoping our catches can be passed on to another parent and child. (Thanks Chad Chiffin and Randy Carlson for helping me replenish my supply of baseballs to keep this tradition alive.) As for Jon and me, we still have catches when we see each other, and Mother Nature cooperates, and we’ve had them on Fathers’ (and other special) Days when we’re together. We’ve played catch throughout his playing days, and events we’ve experienced, including, Pro Baseball and Football games, youth league, high school, college games, thousands of practices and backyard catches, the 2016 All Star game, at League Park in Cleveland, on Jacobs Field a few times, even 20 minutes before his wedding in 2018 at a hotel in Richmond, VA.

Another special tradition I have meaning a lot to me, is since my coaching days, I’ve written Jon’s initials and uniform number under the bill of my caps, along with my dad’s initials, and my uniform number, so I can always feel them at games with me, and Jon can sit with his grandfather and his dad, and Dad can sit with his son and grandson. No matter where we all are, from Heaven to Jamestown, NY, to Midlothian, VA, we can all be spiritually together for ballgames.

One last tradition, of the many I have, is when the Indians/Guardians do, made/make the playoffs, Sally and I, in fun, light two candles in front of our living room Jobu statuette, and sacrifice a “live” rotisserie chicken so Jobu might “wake up bats,” as the Guardians “gird up their loins,” in quest of a Championship.

So, as the title read up top, I’m not Tevye, but I love the “traditions” we have some we continue to keep alive, as our parents did before us. I hope everyone has many special traditions in their lives, and cherish all of them, and hand them down to future generations. As Tevye shouted, may we all do it in his way often, with eyes and fingers pointed at the heavens, mentally shouting, “Tradition!”