JAMESTOWN — I walked to Diethrick Park on Friday.

On any other day, it would take me five minutes, but late yesterday afternoon I decided to take the scenic route.

So at just before 6 p.m. I ventured up Dearing Avenue to Frink Avenue where I made a left turn. Upon reaching the third house on the north side of the street, I paused for a moment, because that home — a stone’s throw from Ring Elementary School — is where my dad, Gunnard “Kinky” Kindberg, grew up.

It was from there that — as a teenager in the 1940s — he would walk down Frink, cross Curtis Street and head for the ballpark, then known as Municipal Stadium, for Jamestown’s minor league games. Dad was a vendor and ticket taker during those years. Heck, he even had a uniform.

Those were the best days of his young life. I know that because he told me so. The son of Thore and Svea Kindberg could name the players without the benefit of a scorecard. He not only knew them by how they performed on the field, but he also knew them off it.

See KINDBERG, Page C2

His stories never got old, and the twinkle in his eye when he told them made the experience even more meaningful to me.

It’s for that reason that I wanted to walk to the Falconer Street ballpark last night. I wanted to see the excited fans beginning to arrive for the Jamestown Tarp Skunks’ Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League playoff contest, imagining that was how my dad and his brother, Harold “Pinky” Kindberg, felt as they arrived at that piece of hallowed ground nearly 80 years ago.

My hope is that the youngsters who have turned out to see the “Skunks” play this summer will be able to one day tell their kids and grandkids about the Summer of 2021, a two-month baseball odyssey that everyone had hoped for, but — if they were honest — could never have expected.

I know the players and manager Jordan Basile won’t forget it.

That was evident when Basile saw a bunch of his players run out to shallow left field during pregame of the regular-season finale on Wednesday night. With third baseman Danny Hosley doing the honors, a cell phone “selfie” was taken with the nearly filled bleachers as a background. Smiles covered the faces of the young men who have called Jamestown home for the last 60 days.

My dad, who passed away in 2006, would have loved these guys. Just like he rooted for Johnny Newman, Ted Wyberanec Sr., Lyle Parkhurst and John O’Neil, the “kid from Frink” would have embraced these ballplayers and would have likely wanted to hang around for a postgame chat each night to get to know them better.

Because that’s the way he came to love the game as a teenager and it’s a gift he passed along to me.

The Tarp Skunks’ 4-3 loss to Geneva last night means their season is over, but that takes nothing away from the special summer it’s been.

My stroll to the ballpark on a beautiful July day was, too.