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"  The fifteenth in a daily series \u2014 Esquire&amp;#039;s historic collection of wisdom from members of the 111th Congress, this one happening to be one of the best... My dad was one of nine. From my mother&amp;#039;s side came twenty-something first cousins. The more people, family and friends you can share your meal with, the better. Going into ninth grade, I started walking door to door for President Ford and our congressman, Bill Goodling \u2014 this was back in 1976. I&amp;#039;ve known ever since that I&amp;#039;d like to represent my community in the House of Representatives. Twenty-four years later, I ended up succeeding Goodling. I&amp;#039;m living the dream of my childhood. I wanted to be the starting catcher for the Baltimore Orioles. That&amp;#039;s one dream that wasn&amp;#039;t going to come true. But I did get to catch a game on a Major League field. Not maybe what I envisioned as a kid, but still exciting. I caught for the Republican team in the Congressional baseball game against the Democrats. Jackie Robinson&amp;#039;s wife threw out the first pitch \u2014 well, she handed it to a student in her foundation to throw. I got to catch it. It was a great game through six innings. We played seven. In the top of the seventh, the Democrats had runners on first and third, no outs. The runner on first started to steal and I faked a throw to second, then tried to pick off the guy at third. It was probably one of my best throws. I had the runner dead. Unfortunately, the ball skimmed the top of the runner&amp;#039;s helmet and flew past the third baseman into left field. All hell broke loose and the Democrats scored six runs in the inning to win the game. I ended up getting needled by both sides. And it was a beautiful throw!  I&amp;#039;m a proud product of Little League baseball. I say to my eleven-year-old and fourteen-year-old, &amp;quot;If you do your best, that&amp;#039;s all we can ask.&amp;quot; Little League emphasizes that. We start every game with that pledge \u2014 I&amp;#039;ll probably get it not quite perfect \u2014 &amp;quot;I trust in God, I love my country, I will respect the game&amp;#039;s laws, I will play fair and try to win, but win or lose, I will always do my best.&amp;quot; My dad didn&amp;#039;t see the glass half full. He saw it totally full. He approached life with conscious optimism. The most spectacular view of Washington comes from inside the Capitol, between the inner and outer dome. I paid off my last student loan as a member of Congress. My parents instilled in their kids that if you make mistakes, you&amp;#039;re accountable for them. If you do wrong, you&amp;#039;re accountable. You need to learn from those mistakes, overcome them and try not to repeat them. I don&amp;#039;t stay in Washington. I commute from York each day. I&amp;#039;ve probably stayed overnight in D.C. maybe ten or eleven nights. If I could have a meal with anyone? I&amp;#039;d like to have my dad back. I&amp;#039;d like my kids to share Thanksgiving dinner with him. I lived about a block and a half from my parents&amp;#039; home. I was working on a project that morning when my mom called to say, &amp;quot;Hey, your dad seems a little out of it. He&amp;#039;s gonna want to go to the doctor or the hospital.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Let me get cleaned up and I&amp;#039;ll come over.&amp;quot; While I was cleaning up, my wife rushed in and told me Dad collapsed. I raced right over and got there behind the first medic. He was trying to get an airway cleared and start compressions, but Dad never regained consciousness. He was on life support for about two days, then all five of us kids and my mom made the decision to take him off. He still guides me every day. My mom is 77. She works an average of twenty hours a week as a cashier at a parking garage. She doesn&amp;#039;t need to work. All five of us kids would take care of her expenses. But she won&amp;#039;t even let us buy her lunches. It&amp;#039;s amazing to me that the passing of my dad, one of nine kids who grew up in a row house in New York during the Depression, was the subject of a conversation between the president of the United States and a Congressman who happened to be his son. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a8779/todd-platts-interview-1110/>