I mean, it really doesn’t get much better than this.

In a piece for Sports on Earth, Pat Jordan travels to Napa Valley to visit with his old friend, Tom Seaver. Two legends talking about baseball and life. Only wish someone had been filming it.

Then again, who needs a camera when Jordan is writing? I’m fairly sure you will be seeing this story again in the 2014 edition of Best American Sports Writing.

Please take the time to read this story.

From the piece:

He walked around the truck in that shoulder-weary, graceless, plowman’s walk that he always had, even when he was a young pitcher with the Mets. He was always a blue-collar pitcher, plodding to the mound as if to a hated, backbreaking job; always the dray horse who had to plow the fields, never the thoroughbred. He wasn’t born Tom Seaver, The Franchise, with a blinding, God-given talent. He made himself into Tom Seaver through a monumental act of will. Years of painstaking, meticulous, disciplined, intelligent, hard work.

We shook hands. He said, “Your beard got white.” I said, “No shit.” He laughed, and I added, “You forget I’m older than you, Tom.” He said, “That’s a fact.” I said, “And smarter, too.” He hung his head and said, “Aw, I don’t know about that.”

We sat at a table in the deli and ordered breakfast. Tom spread a newspaper on the table and studied it. When he was a famous pitcher, he opened the newspaper every morning and studied the previous night’s box scores. Now, he studied the weather to check on his “babies.”

When I’d called him a few weeks before, very early in the morning, he answered the phone out of breath. I said, “It’s me.” He said, “I know.” I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I was sleeping until you woke me up.” I said, “Oh, geez, Tom, I’m sorry. I forgot the time difference.” I heard his evil cackle, and then he said, “I’ve been up two hours, watching the sun rise.” I said, “You prick!” He laughed. I said, “You’re out of breath, watching the fucking sun rise?” He snapped, “I was working, for chrissakes, taking care of my babies.” I said, “Your grandkids are there?” He said, “No, my babies. My grapes.” I said, “Tom, you gotta get a life.”

But of course, he had a life, a new one — Tom Seaver, owner of The Seaver Family Vineyards on Diamond Mountain — which was why I’d called him in the first place. “One last story,” I’d said. “You and your babies.”