Going to the Show
When I play catch I hear voices. Any toss of the ball evokes visions of a close play at the plate, complete with crowd noise and announcer commentary. I love those visions.
The SF Giants arrived in California the year after me. For the first two years they played at Seals Stadium at 16th & Bryant. I am told I went to my first game there in a bassinet. My first memory of baseball is of walking up the tunnel into the stands at Candlestick. My dad stopped at the top to let me take in the view. The big green expanse was filled with fantastic sounds and smells. We could see the teams taking batting practice, the guys selling peanuts, and thousands of excited people. My first experience with awe. I didn’t get it, but I knew it was big, and I knew it was good.
In 1962 my heroes came to Modesto. The World Series was contested by the SF Giants and the New York Yankees. When play was interrupted for four days by rain the teams played a practice game in the closest well drained field. Del Webb Field was a small minor league park so the seats were filled before tickets went on sale. My dad loaded us in the station wagon and took us down to Del Webb just to get as close as we could to the action.
A knothole in the left field fence gave me a window on the game. I saw Mays, McCovey, Cepeda, and the Alou brothers. The Yankees fielded Maris, Mantle, Berra, and Ford. There must have been at least ten hall of famers out there. The action was hard to follow, but it didn’t matter; this was big and really good.
In that experience, and a hundred others, I witnessed legends playing history. A witness of history in the making feels like a part of that history. I began to look at tickets as fan stock, and became part owner of the team. Maybe it’s about being part of something bigger than ourselves. Maybe it’s about having heroes that are so accessible that we can call them bums when they let us down. I just know it’s big, and it’s very good.
Baseball was my first exposure to that sense of belonging to something bigger. The game invites you in to be an active participant, even as an observer. As I searched for my place in the world I often experienced the longing for being a part of something big; something with a higher purpose. Yes, even higher than baseball. The invitation to that journey came with that first awe inspiring baseball experience. We can discuss the rest of the journey later. For now, it is enough to say that that invitation showed me that there was something out there that I could not completely grasp. It was big, and it was good, and I wanted a part in it.