Talkin' Baseball

It's that time of the year again…October means post-season baseball.  Although football has always been by far my favorite sport, ever since I moved to Wisconsin in 1977 at the age of 11 I have had an on-again off-again love affair with baseball.  Prior to that move while living in upstate New York I was completely oblivious to baseball...I was all about football.  But once I found myself living in a suburb of Milwaukee I became a huge Brewers fan.  I loved them...the Brew Crew...Bambi's bombers, Stormin' Gorman.  I can still rattle off all of the main players from that late 70's team who got better and better each year until they eventually made it to the World Series in 1982.  Cecil Cooper, Don Money, Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner, Robin Yount, Sal Bando, Larry Hisle, Gorman Thomas, Sixto Lezcano, Charlie Moore... 

Baseball was everything back then.  I would go to 10-15 games a year (tailgating at County Stadium was an art form and a perfected ritual) and catch all of the rest of the games on TV or radio while poring over the players’ stats in the newspaper.  We would religiously collect and trade baseball cards, and I still have probably a dozen large moving boxes full of those cards.  I remember dragging my dad's lawnmower up the street to the big vacant lot by Gary Paulson's house and mowing out a baseball field.  It took all day in the tall, thick, weedy grass and the poor mower took a terrible beating but we got ourselves a field and we played all day, every day.  We would copy the swings and pitching motions of our favorite players and we played every game like it was game 7 of the World Series.

I remember being at the dramatic game 5 on 10/10/82 when the Brewers came from behind to beat the California Angels in the best of five AL Championship Series,  sending them to their first (and last) World Series.  Along with thousands of other fans I stormed onto the field and clapped the backs of our players, and then I ran the bases and slid into home plate.  Before being ushered off the field I filled my jean pockets with clumps of grass and infield dirt as a souvenir.  When I got home I carefully emptied the contents of my pockets into a ziplock baggie, and I am sure that I still have that baggie somewhere in one of the countless number of boxes in my basement.  The World Series was incredibly exciting that year but I was crushed when they lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in 7 games.  I kind of got out of baseball after that as the next 5 years my interests shifted sharply to girls, music, and partying.

Then in 1987 I found myself working for Sims Security in Minneapolis, MN and I worked about 20 Minnesota Twins games that year.  I was still and will always be a Brewers fan, but by then I had became a converted diehard Twins fan as well.  They had a great season and I worked games 2, 6 & 7 of the 1987 World Series with our Twins against the damn Cardinals at the H.H.H. Metrodome in Minneapolis.  I could not believe I was getting paid to go to the World Series! 

I even got a Kent Hrbek home run ball that he hit during the pre-game batting practice of game 2.  All of us ushers were sitting in the lower deck seats behind 1st base getting our pre-game instructions and assignments from our supervisor when Kent clocked one into the upper-deck TV platform that hangs over the field in right-field.  I did not see it bounce out so it must still be in there!  There was nobody up there and I watched for a minute to see if anyone was going for it.  Nope...so I quietly slipped out of my seat, up the stairs and into the hallway.  I ran to the next set of stairs, up and up until I finally got to the upper hallway.  I turned to my right and I see another dude waaaay down at the opposite end of the hallway heading my way.  We both stopped and stared, sizing each other up for a second...and then we simultaneously broke into a dead sprint for the section between us where the ball was.  I got there just before him, turned the corner, jumped over the railing onto the platform and grabbed the ball!  Luckily nobody noticed and I didn't get fired.

Not only did I not get fired, but for game 2 they assigned me to the wives' section so I was right behind home plate and on TV throughout the game. It was part of a deal that I made with my supervisor, whereby I agreed to work the Warren Zevon concert just down the street during game 1 if he would give me a good assignment for game 2.  I totally won out on the deal.  The concert was great, with Warren giving game updates during the show, and I got the sweet assignment for game 2.  I got to meet Kirby Pucket's sister (she was even bigger than he was) and a few other wives and a bunch of sportscasters from around the country.  I rapped with an AP writer from New York up in the sportscaster booth behind home plate and we both had to duck as a ball somehow made it over the screen and into the booth.  Kirby's sister shared her popcorn with me and she was very nice.  It was a great night and the Twins won, taking a 2-0 lead in the Series.

The thing that sticks out most in my mind about those games was the incredible volume of noise in the Metrodome, especially during games 6 and 7.  The 'Noise' took on a life of its own and was like a living breathing entity that consumed everything and every one.  I have never experienced anything like that before or since.  I think I remember reading somewhere that it was clocked at over 120 decibels, which was louder than the sound of an airline jet taking off.  You could literally scream at the top of your lungs to the person right next to you, and if they couldn't read lips then there was no hope of them understanding you.  At the exhilarating moment when the Twins finally won it at the end of game 7, I was standing in a stairwell in the upper deck by the foul pole in left field.  A cop that was standing next to me grabbed me, picked me up, and started spinning and tossing me around in the air with glee.  Given my history with cops it was a little unnerving, but it made a 21 year old kid realize that they are just people too.

Afterwards the entire city went crazy, with people spilling out into the streets and honking horns and screaming and yelling and partying like it was the greatest thing that had ever happened in the history of the world.  It was complete joyous chaos with everybody on the same page...hugging, kissing, high-fiving and happy with each other.  Everything was beautiful.  I got on my little Suzuki 185 Enduro motorcycle and slowly made my way from the stadium through the sea of people on the city streets.  It was total madness.  I finally made it to the freeway, across the 35W bridge, and then back to my apartment on 4th street on the other side of the Mississippi River just a mile or two from downtown.  Me and my friends hung out on the front porch drinking beers into the wee hours of the morning while listening to the celebratory noise which we could easily hear from there.

Me and baseball have had our ups and downs over the years...from my first game in Milwaukee with my 5th grade class and getting an autograph from some Chicago White Sox pitcher in the bullpen, to going to games with my dad and getting autographs from the players by the dugout before games, to going to the ballpark with friends in high school and choosing to stay in the parking lot with the keg and the brats and listening to Bob Uecker call the game on the radio instead of actually going in to the game, to eventually the long strike that started in 1994 being the all-time low point.  I was done with baseball for many years after that, but with the Twins getting a new stadium a few years ago my interest has been renewed and I have started going to games again.  Baseball has supplied me with countless fun afternoons attending, watching or listening to games over the last 4 decades.  The Twins have reverted back to being a crappy team and that is a bummer, but there will always be something magical about heading to the ballpark with your friends, getting a hot dog and a beer and settling into your seats to watch the action.  At 1 and 3 years old my kids are still a bit too young bring to games, but I am really looking forward to a couple of years from now when I can turn on the next generation to the joys of baseball.