I fell in love with baseball in 1979. I followed it, without even knowing all the rules or when the regular season ended. I remember collecting baseball cards and wondering why the luncheonette around the corner no longer carried them. I remember when the Burger King around the corner opened and Catfish Hunter was the guest. I waited online for an eternity. For a 7-year-old, that might have been an hour. 6 weeks later, Thurman Munson died in a plane crash and I remember when I heard the news. My favorite player was Reggie Jackson. Dave Winfield was another favorite when he came to the Yankees in 1981.
For my father, baseball was the dumbest thing. He grew up in Israel and liked soccer, he thought baseball was boring and the players were standing around and doing nothing. Until 1984, this Mets fan was a Yankees fan. Going to a Yankees game for my father was out of the question since people had this idea of what the Bronx was like because a good chunk of the South Bronx was burned out. It was my Great Uncle Jack who took me to my first ballgame in 1980 at Shea Stadium for the Mets. I didn’t get to Yankee Stadium until 1983 when the camp took us.
When my son was young, he was a huge NASCAR fan. He got hooked because I was watching. I would take him to the races in the Poconos and even had him meet his favorite driver, Jimmie Johnson, and sit in the drivers’ meeting where he met Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, and Danica Patrick. Baseball replaced his passion. He’s been to 24 MLB ballparks at age 19 and he’s still a little peeved that I’ve been to 28. Jason also loves going to autograph shows and enjoys meeting Hall of Famers, as well as current players. His passion is looking at who will be appearing at the different card shows. For years, he was looking for Dave Winfield to show up for a local event and when they had a show at the American Dream where both Reggie and Dave appeared, I plucked down the money to attend.
I was never a happy kid, there are so many reasons why. I always felt alone and it didn’t help that any interest I had, was ridiculed. Whether it was baseball, pro wrestling, comic books, or even reading the newspaper from the back (sports page) to the front, everything I showed an interest in was dumb. So when you get ridiculed for your interest, you learn to hide things, and that causes further complications. Jason will not be like me, he will be happy and he will have a lifetime of wonderful memories of his father. You can’t change the past, you can only make things right by paying it forward.
