This weekend, my family and I travel to Kansas City. We may visit Legoland. I would very much like to visit the Negro League Baseball Museum (particularly in light of recent incidents of vandalism targeting Negro League sites in and around Kansas City.)
The real reason for the trip is to take my kids to their first Red Sox game. The tickets were a birthday gift to my older daughter, who has always followed my lead in rooting for the Sox. (Her younger siblings have bounced around, at various times declaring themselves Cardinals, Cubs, and even Pirates fans. Although in the months since we announced this weekend's trip, they have now followed their sister's and father's lead. We are a family of Red Sox fans. A poster of Mookie Betts hangs in my son's room, a declaration of his undying fandom since 11 weeks ago.
This will not be their first trip to the ballpark. A year ago, also for my daughter's birthday, my mother-in-law purchased tickets for a Cardinals game in St. Louis. My M-i-L is a diehard and lifelong Cardinal fan, having grown up here in the Midwest. She had hoped to make at least one of her grandchildren into Cards fans as well, and for a while it appeared she would be successful (note that the hat on the hot dog eating boy is a Cards hat). But a year later it appears I have won that battle. Sorry, Nona.
Regardless, the far more important thing is that they are baseball fans. I would rather raise a Yankee fan than a kid who didn't like the game at all.
I have been to somewhere, I would guess, between 100 and 150 Major League Baseball games in my life, and probably a couple dozen minor league games (my post-college years were spent living walking distance from the Eastern League Harrisburg Senators). Kansas City will be the eighth stadium in which I've seen a game. I don't remember all of them, but a few stick out.
June 21, 1977. To the best of my recollection, my first game. Baltimore was just a 90 minute drive from where I grew up, and it seemed we always made the trip for at least one game whenever the Red Sox were in town. We sat in the bleachers in right field. Luis Tiant threw a two-hit shutout. But what I really remember is George Scott hitting a home run, and my Dad teaching me that Scott's homers were called "Long 'Taters." Jim Rice also homered, and he would spend much of the next 12 years as my absolute favorite player.
I probably saw somewhere between 15 and 20 games in old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. It was a perfectly ordinary stadium, but kind of close to my heart anyway. Fenway is the only park I've been to more frequently. My last visit there was for a Steelers/Ravens game in 1996. RIP.
July 16, 1978. I stumbled across this one on Youtube about a month ago. I had sort of forgotten about it, but as soon as I saw the screen grab from the video, it jolted my memory. I knew it was after arguing a pickoff play before I even clicked to watch. I knew the manager threw bats on to the field during the course of his tirade. It's weird, the things that embed themselves in the brain of a seven-year old. This was game two of a Saturday double-header. Baseball Reference tells me Rod Carew went 4-for-9 on the day, because of course he did. Carew also collected his 2,000th career hit in game one of the series.
By the way, I appreciate that use of instant replay to correct umpire errors is a net good thing. But we lost something when we lost purple-faced managers going absolutely bonkers over a missed call. If this happened today, Gene Mauch would calmly ask for a replay, the play would be overturned (he was definitely safe), and not one single seven-year old kid in attendance would remember it 39 years later. That's just sad.
June 21 and 27, 1986. Roger Clemens wins his 13th and 14th consecutive games to start the season. Over two starts, he throws 16 innings and strikes out 17 Orioles, allowing four earned runs. Ho hum. The first of these two games, in Fenway, I purchased a white towel with a red "K" on it. The following week, in Baltimore, I brought the towel with me, and promptly lost it in the parking lot after the game. C'est la vie.
Note: I know how it ended, but the 1986 season was my absolutely favorite season as a Red Sox fan. Clemens, winning Cy Young and League MVP. Jim Rice, with a final renaissance season. Dwight Evans and Wade Boggs, doing Dwight Evans and Wade Boggs things. A 10-game September winning streak to finally put away the Yankees. And the epic ALCS comeback over the Angels. The World Series disaster that followed does not erase all that. It just doesn't.
Sometime in the summer of 2005. Visiting friends in Chicago, we attended a couple games in Wrigley Field. Sat in the center field bleachers for one game, down the left field line in Ferris Beuller territory for the other. We averaged about one Old Style per inning. Shockingly, my recollection of both games are hazy. I think the Cubs won, though.
Other games, other stadiums… The Phillies beat the Dodgers 10-3 at the Vet. I remember the Phananatic, I remember Mike Schmidt going 0-4, but I remember the way the whole crowd reacted when he flied out to the warning track in his final at bat… Petco Park in San Diego, the afternoon following a friend's wedding. I think it was against the Mariners. I remember Hell's Bells and Trevor Hoffman closing out the win… And the Cardinals just last year. I remember the looks on my kids faces. I hope to see them again this weekend.
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