A few years ago, a newspaper headline caught my eye. An actual newspaper, with ink that came off on your hands and got smeared on your coffee mug or face, if you were truly unfortunate. The headline in question was about Don Larson, Yankee pitcher, selling the jersey he wore when he pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

Pitching a perfect game in the World Series is like walking on the moon. It’s been done before, sure, but still, it’s wildly stupendous. And, whereas a dozen people have walked on the moon, only one person has pitched a perfect game in the Series. And that person was Don Larson.

There’s a famous picture from that game, of Yogi Berra leaping into Larson’s arms. You can see a bit of Larson’s sleeve and some pin-striped fabric above the belt. That’s the jersey, of course. It’s right there in the picture, and I bet when Larson touches those pinstripes a little piece of him is right back in Yankee Stadium, smelling the outfield grass, hearing his teammates and the Yankee faithful cheer him on. But let me tell you something really stupendous: Larson sold the jersey and gave the money to his grandkids. So they could go to college.

It’s gotta be hard, don’t you think? Letting go of it after all those years. Part of that night still lingers in the fabric, dirt ground into the stitching; blood and sweat soaked in the cloth. Larson wasn’t a great pitcher. His career statistics are what sportscasters like to call “middling.” The perfect game is the only reason he gets mentioned alongside Yankee greats, like Ruth, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Mantle and Jackson. Totems, like the jersey for Larson, physically connect us with meaningful parts of our past. A plucked daisy pressed in a paperback or a ticket stub to a high-school play can garner the weight of pricelessness. Imagine the totem-tonnage of a singular feat never accomplished before or since.

You know what, though? I bet it was easy. I can only imagine how that night felt like for Larson. But I know how it feels when my son threads his fingers into mine, or when my daughter, mostly asleep, mutters “I love you” as I tuck her in. The choice between an old jersey and your own flesh and blood—even a jersey with sport’s most famous name stitched across the chest, a magnificent, immortal, transcendent cloth that’s, let’s be honest, right up there with the Shroud of Turin—is no real decision at all, is it?

Have you ever felt more joy than the human body can handle? An explosive joy that bores a hole deeper into you than you thought possible and drops in a stick of dynamite? The explosion wells up in your chest, crushing your lungs and pressing out between your ribs. Only a few things in this world can make you feel that way.

I bet Larson’s grandkids give him that feeling.

You’ve felt it too, right? Joy that elevates, tingles your skin, and lodges your breath in your throat. Joy that keeps you up past midnight perfectly ironing a sailor costume for your daughter’s 8,000th dance rehearsal? Joy that makes your heart burst because it’s just so damn full of whatever it is kids fill it up with? You wonder if it just might kill you, and you think, “Death by joy is probably a good way to go.”  

I guess that’s love, isn’t it? When you look at your kids, and—for a fleeting sliver of time—you feel the fullness of love. You’re not seeing the toddler who just spilled milk all over the kitchen floor or the middle-schooler who’s wrestling her emotions. You’re looking at another human, a whole, separate person whose heart is so intimately bound to yours with infinite indestructible threads, that there’s no untangling them. No force in the universe can cut you apart, no matter how many filaments your seven-year-old, with her independent streak, might strain and snap. Sorry kid, them’s the breaks.

It’s undefinable, inexpressible. So small you can’t see it. So huge the universe can’t contain it. Crushingly heavy, but so light it’ll waft away if you grasp too tightly. Even now I feel it slip between my fingers as they clack the keyboard.

But do you see why there’s no decision to make? You made it the moment your first child wrapped her fingers around your thumb. The shirt, that magnificent, legendary shirt, with its sweat and blood and Bronx dirt doesn’t have a chance. There’s no question, so stop asking. Of course, you sell the shirt.