Hardball Hukommelse

It's opening week in the 2013 season and if I allow myself to think sentimentally about this great game, a steady succession of childhood memories associated with baseball begins to flow through me...

-1987...opening a pack of Topps cards in my grandparents' living room, discarding the hard stick of pink gum from the stack, and seeing Bo Jackson's "Future Star" card sitting on top. Seems like it was the only time I ever scored a truly priceless card. Today, it's worth about $2 sitting somewhere in my parents' crawlspace.

-Sitting on the steps of the house we moved into in 1994, flipping through several laminated baseball card albums with the neighbor kid, Justin, who was a few years younger than me. It was hot and sunny. He's dead now; crashed his car into a gully while driving drunk.

-In the backyard of our old house, my eight-year-old self would set up three flimsy bases in a rough diamond where second base got plopped no more than ten feet from the home run fence -- a very short, old, splintery 3ft. wooden fence with the upper third carved into some kind of lattice pattern -- and one of those tightly-strung pitchback net backstops placed behind the homeplate area, which had a red-bordered strike zone stitched onto the center of that wonderfully cooperative construction. I'd write out the 1988 Blue Jays or 1990 Padres starting lineup in pencil in a little notebook, leaving enough space to tally their R/H/HR/RBI/AVG stats. It was then time to play whiffle ball. As pitcher Jimmy Key or Andy Benes I'd throw to each imaginary batter of that day's opponent (or most of 'em at least), only surrendering hits or walks or HBP to opposing players whom I liked. When it came time for the home team to bat, I'd do my best to impersonate each of the Jays, studying their cards for clues as to how they'd hit -- not just righty or lefty, but gap power or slap singles and so forth. Every so often, I'd even make a defensive play -- always a web gem.

-Attending a Denver Zephyrs AAA minor league game in the early 90's at Mile High Stadium for the 4th of July fireworks show. There were 80,000 people there to see minor league ball!

-With the Alameda Pirates little league team, I remember making a diving stop at 2nd base against the Lakewood Tigers and throwing the coach's son out at first, after which he yelled from the first base line: "What a play!" Might've seemed like a small tip of the cap on his part, but it stuck with me in several ways. I appreciated the compliment and it made me feel good, but it also told me that it's cool to praise the opposition when they do something great.

-Grandpa Kroh in his gold hatchback Honda parked directly behind homeplate, keeping score for both teams during dozens of my little league games. Running up to him after I hit my first and only home run (a grand salami) to ask if he'd seen it, he replied, "oh I saw that grand slam alright, but who was that slugger that hit it?"

-After spending a season chasing down fly balls in the outfield since nobody else seemed capable, my mom told me to write on the head coach's thank-you card: "Thanks for a great season. Wish I could've played more second base." I didn't want to write it, but I did. I still feel bad that coach Juan Pena had to read that rubbish.

-As a younger lad, around six or seven, standing in the dugout entrance at one of my dad's softball games as the bat-boy and not paying attention, feeling a cannonball explode into my chest and knock me back to the bench and down, getting the wind knocked out of me and seeing my dad and a few other players standing over me asking if I was alright. I eventually got up, I guess, but clearly remember the old man who ran the little concession stand come over and tell me I could have any drink I wanted, on the house. I didn't know what "on the house" meant, but I asked for a Yoohoo chocolate milk, which I'd always wanted to try, and drank it on the bench with my dad's buddies acting proud of my toughness.