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Heads-up: You may need a tissue. These excerpts from a feature by sportswriter John Niyo aren't primarily about baseball and tug emotions that no game can reach.
The Detroit News columnist speaks with Tigers catcher James McCann and Jessica McCann about their half-year-old twin sons. Kane Timothy McCann and Christian Thomas McCann were delivered prematurely last December. The boys are healthy half-year-olds weighing 14 and 15 pounds.
"It doesn't matter what you do at the field that day," says catcher James McCann (Instagram photos from Jessica McCann)
On their first Father's Day with children, the couple that wed in 2014 reflects -- as all new parents do -- on a perspective shift and why "this year is so different:"
♦ 'A special feeling:' "Getting to go home at night and seeing two smiling babies, it’s such a blessing. It doesn't matter what you do at the field that day. They don't care. They don't know. And it's a special feeling, being a dad." -- James
♦ Refocused conversations: "James has always been pretty good at whatever happens at the field, stays at the field. But this year is so different: We don't talk much about baseball. And I love talkin' baseball with him. It’s just our focus has shifted to the boys at home." -- Jessica
♦ 'New kind of love:' "It's one of the most rewarding things, and you do take pride in that feeling of knowing that you're needed. Not wanted, but needed. The unconditional love that they have for you. I thought I loved my wife, I thought I loved my parents, and I do. But you have kids and, man, that's a completely different kind of love right there." -- James
♦ Intensive Care Unit memories: "Every time we looked around, we just realized how good we had it. We're waiting for these babies to grow, and there's not a lot that we're having to deal with compared to other people. So we were just thankful." -- Jessica
