My First Game (I’m Pretty Sure)
Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2024 11:20 am
I haven't had enough time lately to write up a report on the closing weeks of my Rockville team's season, but I should have time soon. Meanwhile, I do like writing and reading and because this is a league of people who share those interests, I hope you don't mind me cross-posting a series of essays I've been writing on the games I've attended that are most deeply burnt into my brain. This is a project I'm trying to do during this season, as I feel myself getting old and enjoy reassessing some amazing moments.
When people ask me how I can love a game with as little action as baseball, I always start with, “Well, baseball is time travel. If you find a way to get into the game, all those moments where ‘nothing is happening’ become a fountain of possibilities.”
What I mean is, while I’m waiting for the batter to adjust his cup and get back in the batter’s box, I’m time traveling to other listless games that suddenly changed on a single pitch or swing. I talk through the possibilities with the person sitting next to me at the game, typically my friends Pete or Andy – or maybe the stranger on my other side. We may convince ourselves that the pitcher is showing signs of tiring. We may reflect on a game from 10 years earlier, when a batter awoke the crowd with a mammoth home run in just this situation. We may joke about the inevitability of the current batter striking out.
For those of you who don’t get into this kind of thing, who have not (yet) been converted to the glory of the game, you may rightly be thinking, “God, Jim must be insufferable to sit next to during a game.” That’s fair. Even fellow baseball lovers have called me out for my insufferable “dugout chatter.” At a game circa 1991 or 1992, before young third baseman Dave Hollins became a key member of the lightning-in-a-bottle 1993 NLCS Phillies, a game was in the middle of a listless stretch, when I turned to my seatmate and said, hopefully, “This kid’s swing reminds me of Greg Luzinski’s.” I was seriously time-traveling to all the line-drive home runs I saw The Bull hit out to leftfield in my teens. Before my friend could nod along to the beauty of my insight, the older guy in front of us turned around and went vice presidential debate Lloyd Bentson on Dan Quayle me, with something along the lines of, “Sir, Dave Hollins is no Greg Luzinski!”
OK, it turned out he was right. Hollins would get called out looking at a third strike in that situation, but I stand behind my time-traveling optimism.
I guess what I’m saying with this long preface is that my memories of baseball games etched in my soul may not always be accurate, but they are truthful. Let’s get onto Game 1 in this series, which I’m pretty sure is the first game I attended in person, with my Uncle Joe and my Grandpop, the 2 people who turned me onto baseball.
My Memories: It was Phillies vs Giants, early in 1972, probably right before Lefty Mania hit (Lefty being Steve Carlton, the newly acquired pitcher who would put up probably the greatest season relative to a terrible team in baseball history). I call this the Chris Speier Game.
Speier was then a young shortstop with the Giants, a team best known to me as home to fading legends my uncle and grandfather had been telling me about, like Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal. Sam McDowell might have been on that team, too. At some point early in my baseball history, I remember him being traded straight up for Gaylord Perry, which was a pretty titanic swapping of aces on par with the Phillies trading Rick Wise before the 1972 season for Steve Carlton. Those power deals made an impression on me, and I’ll go to my grave thinking about how cool Sam McDowell’s nickname was – Sudden Sam McDowell, always “Sudden Sam” – but all these years later, I don’t recall whether any of those fading legends were involved in the game. I only remember Chris Speier, a 1971 Topps all-star rookie, kind of like me at my first game, hitting 2 home runs and the Phillies losing. Still, I was turned on by the notion that a rookie could have such an impact on a game.
Rookie sensations were part of my introduction to the game, which I first absorbed watching on TV at the feet of my uncle and grandfather in 1971. The Phillies had a flashy rookie in centerfield named Willie Montanez. He was another Topps all-star rookie team member, as stated on his 1972 card. He would snap his glove as a flyball settled into it. He flipped his bat as he approached the plate from the on-deck circle. He was lefthanded, like me and my baseball teachers. Willie lost out on Rookie of the Year to Braves catcher Earl Williams, who hit 3 more home runs but was nowhere near as cool. I took that as a great indignity, and the next year, when Williams’ baseball card came out, also with the little Topps all-star rookie team trophy in the bottom corner, I’d set it next to Willie’s card and just seethe.
Montanez was also highly expressive, the closest thing we had to Roberto Clemente in terms of physical quirks. Willie and another young player who wore his heart on his sleeve on the 1971 Phillies, shortstop Larry Bowa, appealed to me from Day 1. I was all about “letting it all hang out, man.” The hippie ethos is another thing I picked up from my uncle, our relative family hippie. He is also the person responsible for me loving music. Baseball in 1972 was just at the edge of getting hip, with the Oakland A’s and their awesome facial hair. From 1972 to 1974, I would note the baseball cards showing players with long hair, sideburns, and facial hair. I leaned in harder on rooting for those players, even if they were on the opposition.
So, my first game (I’m pretty sure) was highlighted by a rookie shortstop on the opposition hitting 2 home runs to beat my Phillies. Or was it?
What the Box Score Says: I looked at all the games the Giants played in Philly’s once-glorious toilet bowel of a stadium, Vet Stadium, in 1972. Speier would hit 15 home runs that season, which was a lot of home runs for a middle infielder in those days, but the only home run he hit in Vet Stadium in 1972 was on May 6 (https://www.baseball-reference.com/.../ ... 5060.shtml). Let the record be corrected: Chris Speier hit only 1 home run at the first game I ever saw in person. Everything else I have remembered about that game is the truth.
When people ask me how I can love a game with as little action as baseball, I always start with, “Well, baseball is time travel. If you find a way to get into the game, all those moments where ‘nothing is happening’ become a fountain of possibilities.”
What I mean is, while I’m waiting for the batter to adjust his cup and get back in the batter’s box, I’m time traveling to other listless games that suddenly changed on a single pitch or swing. I talk through the possibilities with the person sitting next to me at the game, typically my friends Pete or Andy – or maybe the stranger on my other side. We may convince ourselves that the pitcher is showing signs of tiring. We may reflect on a game from 10 years earlier, when a batter awoke the crowd with a mammoth home run in just this situation. We may joke about the inevitability of the current batter striking out.
For those of you who don’t get into this kind of thing, who have not (yet) been converted to the glory of the game, you may rightly be thinking, “God, Jim must be insufferable to sit next to during a game.” That’s fair. Even fellow baseball lovers have called me out for my insufferable “dugout chatter.” At a game circa 1991 or 1992, before young third baseman Dave Hollins became a key member of the lightning-in-a-bottle 1993 NLCS Phillies, a game was in the middle of a listless stretch, when I turned to my seatmate and said, hopefully, “This kid’s swing reminds me of Greg Luzinski’s.” I was seriously time-traveling to all the line-drive home runs I saw The Bull hit out to leftfield in my teens. Before my friend could nod along to the beauty of my insight, the older guy in front of us turned around and went vice presidential debate Lloyd Bentson on Dan Quayle me, with something along the lines of, “Sir, Dave Hollins is no Greg Luzinski!”
OK, it turned out he was right. Hollins would get called out looking at a third strike in that situation, but I stand behind my time-traveling optimism.
I guess what I’m saying with this long preface is that my memories of baseball games etched in my soul may not always be accurate, but they are truthful. Let’s get onto Game 1 in this series, which I’m pretty sure is the first game I attended in person, with my Uncle Joe and my Grandpop, the 2 people who turned me onto baseball.
My Memories: It was Phillies vs Giants, early in 1972, probably right before Lefty Mania hit (Lefty being Steve Carlton, the newly acquired pitcher who would put up probably the greatest season relative to a terrible team in baseball history). I call this the Chris Speier Game.
Speier was then a young shortstop with the Giants, a team best known to me as home to fading legends my uncle and grandfather had been telling me about, like Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal. Sam McDowell might have been on that team, too. At some point early in my baseball history, I remember him being traded straight up for Gaylord Perry, which was a pretty titanic swapping of aces on par with the Phillies trading Rick Wise before the 1972 season for Steve Carlton. Those power deals made an impression on me, and I’ll go to my grave thinking about how cool Sam McDowell’s nickname was – Sudden Sam McDowell, always “Sudden Sam” – but all these years later, I don’t recall whether any of those fading legends were involved in the game. I only remember Chris Speier, a 1971 Topps all-star rookie, kind of like me at my first game, hitting 2 home runs and the Phillies losing. Still, I was turned on by the notion that a rookie could have such an impact on a game.
Rookie sensations were part of my introduction to the game, which I first absorbed watching on TV at the feet of my uncle and grandfather in 1971. The Phillies had a flashy rookie in centerfield named Willie Montanez. He was another Topps all-star rookie team member, as stated on his 1972 card. He would snap his glove as a flyball settled into it. He flipped his bat as he approached the plate from the on-deck circle. He was lefthanded, like me and my baseball teachers. Willie lost out on Rookie of the Year to Braves catcher Earl Williams, who hit 3 more home runs but was nowhere near as cool. I took that as a great indignity, and the next year, when Williams’ baseball card came out, also with the little Topps all-star rookie team trophy in the bottom corner, I’d set it next to Willie’s card and just seethe.
Montanez was also highly expressive, the closest thing we had to Roberto Clemente in terms of physical quirks. Willie and another young player who wore his heart on his sleeve on the 1971 Phillies, shortstop Larry Bowa, appealed to me from Day 1. I was all about “letting it all hang out, man.” The hippie ethos is another thing I picked up from my uncle, our relative family hippie. He is also the person responsible for me loving music. Baseball in 1972 was just at the edge of getting hip, with the Oakland A’s and their awesome facial hair. From 1972 to 1974, I would note the baseball cards showing players with long hair, sideburns, and facial hair. I leaned in harder on rooting for those players, even if they were on the opposition.
So, my first game (I’m pretty sure) was highlighted by a rookie shortstop on the opposition hitting 2 home runs to beat my Phillies. Or was it?
What the Box Score Says: I looked at all the games the Giants played in Philly’s once-glorious toilet bowel of a stadium, Vet Stadium, in 1972. Speier would hit 15 home runs that season, which was a lot of home runs for a middle infielder in those days, but the only home run he hit in Vet Stadium in 1972 was on May 6 (https://www.baseball-reference.com/.../ ... 5060.shtml). Let the record be corrected: Chris Speier hit only 1 home run at the first game I ever saw in person. Everything else I have remembered about that game is the truth.
