Thank you, Craig Calcaterra, for making me actually want to fill out a 25 Things... uh... thing, this will actually be fun!
1. My earliest baseball memory comes from before I moved across my small Northwestern Wisconsin city when I was 5. Panini sticker albums were what got me into the game. I had worked on a few albums of other 4 year old attention-grabbers, although I can't seem to remember anything other than the one I helped my sister do at this point, but for two years, I could expect a 25 cent sticker package any time my dad went to the store. Life was good.
Check out #3. That's what I started with.
2. Like Craig, I fell in love with a team in 1988, the kind of love only a five year old can have. It was the year I really tuned into the world of sports, and I can tell you more about those Brewers and Packers teams than I can about the teams 3 or 4 years ago. My parents own a double lot, with the house on one part and the extra lot being the ballfield of dreams for a good 10 years for me. The garden had a tiny rabbit fence surrounding it, easy enough for a five year old to step over, and that became a home run fence. Tiny wood blocks became my bases until I got plastic bases from my uncle for my 6th birthday the next May. At that point, my yard took on the properties of the old League Park in Cleveland, or the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, although I wouldn't realize that for another 20 years. A big maple tree sufficed as the left field "foul pole" until I grew a bit more, and the right field street was blocked by a large tree as well. The center field "flag pole" was actually the street sign. For about 10 years, our yard would have brown patches in the spring where I knew I would put the bases when things dried out.
3. The same uncle that provided me with the bases also cleaned out his closet at the farm, and I ended up with quite a few "season preview" books, mostly football, but one baseball. My search into baseball's past started there, I was learning about the exploits of Pete Rose around the time the rest of America was learning that he was a gambler.
4. Being from Northwestern Wisconsin, we were at the mercy of the Brewers' schedule as far as when we could see them on TV. We'd see them if they were away during the weekend, and that's about it. That, or the one game or two ESPN would care to share with us as well. If I wanted to watch baseball, the Cubs on WGN were the best option, as the Braves played quite a few west coast games in the years before geography really mattered in the divisional alignment. I fell in love all over again, since I never had to worry about the Cubs playing the Brewers, except in the spring, and I'd even get a few of the spring training games the Cubs would show on TV, even a few extra Brewers games. Day baseball, Harry Caray, the vines, the Eastern Division title run in 1989, life was good.
5. A dice game helped me love baseball even more. It was a game where you'd take your baseball cards, check out the average and home runs, and roll on a propped up chart that told you your results. I think I still even have it, somewhere in the middle of the attic at my parents' house. I've since moved on to other baseball simulation pursuits, but for years, the results off the chart colored my perception of what was good (20 homers was the benchmark for a "power hitter," and at the time, it was right, anyway...) and what wasn't (You'd rather have a .260-.279 hitter up with runners on than a .280-.299 hitter. That seem wrong to anyone else?).
6. Random quote break: "If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base." ~Dave Barry
7. Innocence lost: The loss of Paul Molitor to Toronto after the 1992 season was the end of my baseball innocence, as it were. I wasn't knowledgable to get upset over the 1990 lockout, except that it kept spring training games from being played. I wasn't happy about that.
8. I was never that good as a ballplayer myself. I led off when I was 10 because I was small and could draw walks, and I played first base because no one else on the team besides the pitcher could catch the ball consistently. We won one game that year. I wonder why.
9. For 3 or 4 years in the mid 90's, we didn't get ANY Brewers games on local TV or cable, save anything national, which was very rare. Given the Packers and the Badgers had most of my attention at that point for their football prowess, that's the mark of the low point of my baseball worship.
10. Thank God for Midwest Sports Channel. It brought the Brewers back to me, and it brought them more than I had been used to. 120 games a year is a treat when you're used to 3. This was also the first year of the Brewers' National League odyssey. At that point, I fell in love with the pitcher hitting and the strategy behind it.
11. It was also around this point that I lost any ability to care for the Cubs. Not because they were competitors now. No, we were never in contention for the playoffs at this point anyway. It was more that I realized that the local Cubs fans (remember, northwestern Wisconsin) were frontrunners. I'd never see a Cubs hat during a losing streak. I always saw them in 1998, for some reason. Something about Slammin' Sammy chasing Maris and McGwire. I just wanted them to shut up and go away. They did for the next two years. Funny how that works.
12. It was around this time I got heavy into baseball "literature," and I'm not talking Roger Angell and the "romance of the game." I'm talking Sparky Lyle, I'm talking Bill Lee, I'm talking about the Bronx Zoo and a deeper look into what makes baseball what it is. Funny thing, I read Ball Four a few years later, and I didn't see what the big deal was, after having started with the Bronx Zoo. I think I did that backwards. Nothing unusual for me
13. Funny thing, I've never really disliked the Twins. I tend to dislike any Minnesota sports club, but the Twins never gave me a reason to hate them. I also couldn't complain about being able to hop in my car every so often and catch a game for about 50 bucks total, accounting for gas, parking, and ballpark expenses. The Metrodome is underrated. It's not ideal for baseball at all, and probably wouldn't be in the top half of my ballpark rankings when and if I catch all the stadiums at some point, but it's comfy, at the very least.
14. Baseball is a game that's always had its less desirable side. I wonder how today's media would have handled the Black Sox Scandal.
15. Random Quote Break: "I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it." ~Rogers Hornsby
16. Local Red Sox fans did the same thing that the Cubs fans did when they were constantly losing to the Yankees in the playoffs at the turn of the century. You'd see the hats and shirts and hear the talk, until after Game 7, that is. Heck, during 04 when they finally broke through, you heard NOTHING at all from them for about three or four days after they fell behind 2-0. Also, another thing that turns me off about the Red Sox fanbase is the attempt to make the Sox look like the little guys. Sorry. Little maybe in comparison to the Yankees, but you take off the Red, and it's the same machine that spits out cash these days, and spends it just about as well as the Bronx Bombers. Small market fans can see right through that argument, believe you me.
17. At this point, the Metrodome drapes a big banner of Twins legends across the upper deck in center and right field. I remember sitting behind that banner when I went to my first Brewers-Twins game in 1991. At one point, the Twins could pack the place like few other teams.
18. Again, like Craig, sabermetrics brought me another level of caring for this game I love. I can't say I'll ever be one to see the game as nothing but numbers, but I'd hate to be a casual fan at this point. I like feeling like I see things in a slightly different light. Always have.
19. I got to see Turner Field on a high school music trip in 2001. The Mets were in town for one of the first series of the season, right after the Subway Series. I was slightly surprised that the place wasn't packed, especially with the reach that TBS still gave the Braves at that point. There was a group there from Jay Payton's hometown with a banner, and Payton tossed a ball or two in that general direction during the game.
20. Rick Reed pitched in the aforementioned game. He also pitched two starts in a row that I was able to see in 2003, while a camp counselor. We'd make trips to the Dome twice a year after the day's activities were over, and I believe I had to be his good luck charm. He gave up only one run on three hits for the Mets, lost to Esteban Loaiza when Loaiza was having a career year, but only gave up two runs, and won the next game we saw, when the Twins touched up Tim Hudson for five in the first, thanks to three errors. He was done after that year, and would only win one more game in the bigs, even, but it's those kinds of little things that make this game fun.
21. Final Random Quote Break: "This is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss everything between pitches or between innings." ~Bill Veeck
22. My fiancee loves the Brewers, and is the definition of a casual fan, although a daily casual. She doesn't quite buy my argument that Rickie Weeks is a good leadoff hitter, because his batting average doesn't tell her that. She also doesn't understand why I'm so down on Corey Hart, because on-base percentage is not in her vocabulary quite yet. I have the rest of our lives to work on that, though.
23. CC Sabathia was worth it, even if all the players we traded for him end up in the Hall of Fame. I now have a much better perspective on the Doyle Alexander-John Smoltz deal.
24. Speaking of which, after travelling to Ann Arbor to see my football team die a brutal death in the second half, I spent five hours the next day at a Buffalo Wild Wings there seeing Sabathia win us the Wild Card. The TV was directly to my left, but over my head, so for three hours while my three Canadian buddies watched all the football games on the big screens (including the Packers, and including the Jets with Favre, still a success at that point), I watched Sabathia work his magic, and on the TV next to that one, saw the Marlins win for pride. It was a great day. Even better, I saw Michael Phelps that night after the biggest bender of my life, and no, he didn't have a bong.
25. I start itching for baseball again in early January, play the video games, card games, and dice games incessantly, and pray for spring. It's the time of year where baseball becomes a pursuit, something to chase and find, and that makes it even more fun. The season comes and goes, but baseball's always available these days. Life is good.
