It's About the Moments: What Baseball Means to Me

Some moments you just never forget.

Was I born with baseball in my blood, summoned by the gods to its irresistible lure? Did it rub off on me from my father, who worshiped the game but lacked the skill to make his high school team? Or did I gradually acquire an appreciation of the game through sampling myriad roles and perspectives—as player, fan, coach, umpire, and scholar?

The more I pondered these questions, the less I believed my love affair with baseball was sparked by a one-time thunderbolt, as slugger Roy Hobbs experienced in Bernard Malamud's The Natural. Rather, it flourished gradually as a progression of meaningful and memorable moments stretched over a lifetime that, when stitched together like red stitches on white horsehide, tells the story of what baseball means to me, and why it is so.

June 1, 1957

My first big league game at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx was an out-of-theblue surprise from my father. A relentless Yankee fan since childhood, he worshiped Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth's sidekick and power-hitting gentleman from Columbia University. I didn't have a favorite team yet; come to think of it, that may have been my father's motive, to coax me into becoming a Yankee fan, too. It wouldn't surprise me. As it turned out, though, I chose to cheer for my father's team's archrival. I became a Brooklyn, then Los Angeles, Dodgers fan, like my Dad's Pee Wee Reese–loving sister, which rankled him to no end.

In my mind's eye, I can still replay moving from the stadium's shadowy concrete passageway into the blinding light from the playing field. Yankee Stadium was gargantuan, like the Grand Canyon with seats; the Crayola green grass went on forever, broken only by the reddish, silky smooth dirt base paths and pitcher's circle. In the far reaches of center field were big stone monuments honoring the greatest of Yankee greats—and like Billy Crystal in the opening of Ken Burns's PBS documentary Baseball, for the longest time I was convinced those were tombstones, where Babe, Lou, Joe D. and all the others were buried! It's hallowed ground after all, right?

As if yesterday, I remember that day game against the Orioles who nipped the Yanks 4–3. Billy Gardner homered for the visitors, and Yogi, as pinch-hitter in the ninth, cracked a towering round-tripper to make it a one-run game. I had a hot dog slathered with mustard and shared a bag of peanuts with my Dad, but the moment that haunts me to this day happened during BP. I don't know how, but my father landed us eye-popping front row box seats along the first-base line. From there, even the bat boy appeared bigger than life-size.

As we settled in, who smacks a sizzling bouncer our way but number seven, the Mick himself, and, intuitively, my Dad jumps up with his hand outstretched, set to nab the baseball … MY baseball! His timing is perfect, a la Brooks Robinson, but the ball caroms off his bare palm before he can close it—oh no!—and my prize souvenir plops into the lap of the kid sitting next to me. Even though it's technically my baseball, as should be clear to everybody, he's not giving it up. Not to my pleas or my father's bribe offers. When I look to my Dad for sympathy, his raised eyebrows and shoulder shrug make clear it's the survival of the fittest in the jungle of the grandstands; it's not who deserves the ball, it's who's holding the ball when it stops moving. Eager to rub my nose in it, this wise guy with the freckled face finds reason to wave my Mantle ball in my face at least once every inning.

Okay, I get it: baseball's not always fair—and definitely not for sissies!

August 31, 1957

My second game, courtesy of my grandfather, shifted venues to...