Me and Baseball – True Love or Infatuation?

I love that I spent most of my childhood in the 80s. There are so many things from that decade that I remember fondly. I have revisited some of those things and found that it was just the memory of the thing that I loved because the thing itself actually wasn’t that great. I’ll be doing some separate posts down the line to illustrate some of these things. One of the things I look back on with fondness from that period is baseball.

My love affair with baseball began in 1988 when, having some extra money burning a hole in my pocket, I went to a convenient store to buy some candy and instead bought a pack of Topps baseball cards on a whim. I think a pack of cards cost like $.50 back then. Anyway, I got home and tore the package open, stuffed the nasty chewing gum from it into my mouth, and chewed away while shuffling through the cards. Most had names and faces on them that I’d never heard of, but it was a thrilling experience to say the least and I was hooked. The players were unfamiliar to me because I had never really been interested in baseball up to that point. I’m not even sure why I wanted to buy that initial pack of cards to this day. But once I got that first pack, something was sparked within me and I had to have more cards and I also had to know more about the players on the cards and the game that they all played.

Luckily, I had a good source of information about all of it in my dad. He had grown up in Oregon, rooting for the San Francisco Giants and this of course made him an automatic Los Angeles Dodgers hater. He also hated the New York Yankees, which he passed along to me and I hate the Yankees to this very day. But by this time he had begun to follow the Chicago Cubs and the first baseball I ever watched was with him, listening to Harry Caray announcing on WGN. Dad was a Ryne Sandberg fan and I found that I liked him as well and I also became a fan of Mark Grace, Shawon Dunston, and Andre Dawson(who should be in the HOF, IMO). Soon I was watching every Cubs game that I could and loved summer because it meant that I could pretty much watch every day. There were so many Cubs greats that came before this time period, but to me, this was the golden age of the Cubs and I’ll never forget the excitement I felt when they made it to the post-season in 1989……even if it was short-lived thanks to the Giants.

I also found out that Dad had been a baseball card collector back when he was a kid and he broke out his collection to show me when he found out about my new hobby. This was the beginning of my education in baseball history as I had never before heard of players such as Mickey Mantle, Ernie Banks, Willie McCovey (Dad’s childhood fave), or Willie Mays. And once Dad had a look at the baseball cards I had bought, the fire was rekindled in him as well and we found a hobby that we could participate in together. We bought boxes of packs of cards, tried to build complete sets for each year and baseball card manufacturer, and attended countless baseball card conventions (filled with greedy card dealers who would cheat you faster than you can say “Lenny Dykstra”, but I digress). We spent hours at the department stores going through the rack packs to try to find some with star players visible on the front. It was a great way for a father and son to spend time together and we really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Upper Deck began producing high-quality baseball cards. Sure I loved them and collected them as well, but soon the likes of Topps, Donruss, and Fleer couldn’t keep up. This gave birth to the specialty baseball cards such as Topps Stadium Club and Fleer Ultra that cost like $3.00 a pack and soon flooded the baseball card market and brought it to its knees. But it also took all the fun out of card collecting and that was the end for our mutual hobby. I still have all of my baseball cards and thought that someday I might pass them on to Big D, but I think the days of kids being interested in sports card collecting is a thing of the past. I’ll just hang on to them and see what happens, I suppose, just as Dad has done with his.

This all coincided with me coming to the age where my thoughts were turning more to cars and having the freedom of mobility. Going out on the town with my friends left me less and less time to watch baseball and I soon lost interest altogether. At least I got to make it out to Chicago with Dad in the late 80s or early 90s and it was a very special day. It was one of those rare occasions when the Cubs and White Sox were playing at home on the same day…..so we got to watch the Cubs play the Giants at Wrigley Field in the afternoon and the Sox and the Yankees that night in the long since torn down Comiskey Park. Harry Caray even announced our names on the Cubs broadcast that day and I’ll never forget the singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.

After high school, I didn’t keep up with baseball much and I haven’t really since…..until this year. It all started when Leblanc recommended that I read “Shoeless Joe” by W.P. Kinsella. I had always loved Field of Dreams, so I decided to give it a shot. I didn’t like the book as much as the movie, but there was something about the love for baseball that the main character, Ray Kinsella, displayed that started up that old spark again. I have begun watching the Ken Burns Baseball documentary…..I know I am a little late, but baseball history from way back in the day never changes and I have kept up with the headlines enough to have a pretty decent idea of the major events since 1994. I am really enjoying that show and am also planning on reading some books on the history of the Cubs. I have even gone so far as to watch a couple of innings of a Cubs game this year….probably the first since the game after Harry Caray passed away in 1998. It’s kind of weird since I am not familiar with the players like I was back in 1989, but I figure I will learn who I like soon enough. Also, this season is the 100th season since the Cubs won a World Series and they are currently in first place in their division. I find myself checking the standings every few days and am enjoying keeping up with what’s going on in the baseball world. We’re even thinking about making a trip out to Chicago next year and I’ll do everything I can to get into Wrigley again.

Whether or not it will last this time is unknown, but I have a feeling that it will. Dad doesn’t really keep up with baseball anymore but at least I’ve got Leblanc to share the enthusiasm. Here’s hoping the Cubs can break the curse exactly 100 years later…….if not, it’ll be fun to watch anyway and anyway “there’s always next year”.