The Boy(s) of Summer - Part I

The blazing sun glides low on the horizon, slipping between the manmade spires dominating the nearby skyline.  In a few hours, the crescent moon will stand vigil in a cloudless sky, gazing down on the hopeful throngs.  The breeze that has rustled with impatient furor all day has now begun to calm; soon the flags slacken on their poles in the resulting stillness.  Each breath brings cool, crisp spring air into the lungs of the six thousand people huddled en masse, rapt attention on a field of grass and dirt glowing beneath the vast banks of light.

Breath that is now held, waiting, as a three inch sphere hurtles through the air, impacting a well-worn leather mitt with an audible smack.  The umpire sends forth an unintelligible shout, punching his fist into the air, and the crowd lets loose their pent air with groans of discontent.  Strike three looking.  Game over, and the hometown team has given up the home opener.  The fans slowly rise from their seats and head for the exits; their grumbles about the umpires’ accuracy following them into the parking lots.  But through the muted rancor, there is still a sense of happiness pervading throughout.  No one can be too unhappy with tonight’s loss: regardless of the outcome, it means one thing – baseball season is back.

April 8^th never used to be a special day for me.  Many years I likely let it pass without notice, more preoccupied with school or work.  But for the past two years, that date has been figuratively circled in Sharpie on my computer screen’s calendar.  The days leading up to it have been counted down.  And www.iowacubs.com became so familiar to my browser that a simple typed “I” would bring it up in the address bar.  This year was the first that I’ve been to a season opener, but the journey leading to it started many years ago.

I never participated in organized sports as a kid.  I certainly could have, but never really had the ambition.  And in a household where no one watched baseball on TV, it was easy to presume that it wouldn’t become an interest.  But that all began to change with a pack of baseball cards, a bus trip, a book and a cap.  Oh, and ice cream.  Definitely can’t forget the ice cream.

I think the baseball cards came first, since they are the fuzziest in my mind.  I had never owned baseball cards before, but in 1990, my Dad decided for some reason to buy me a pack of Topps cards.  I don’t know how I reacted at the time, but looking back, they were an amazing piece of what’s now a bygone era.  I recall distinctly that there was a piece of gum in the package, awful, stale gum that I nonetheless hoarded until the day I finally allowed myself to indulge in its crunchy-turning-to-sticky sweet goodness.  But that’s just the gum.  The cards were a revelation too and started me on many years of collecting.  I flipped through them, reading the stats and bios, carefully studying the team names and uniforms to pick a favorite (incidentally, it was the Phillies, but only the 1970-1992 version).  I still have those cards to this day.

Shortly thereafter, the tastiest part of the story began.  Elgin is a fairly lucky city to be within a ten minute’s drive of no less than five Dairy Queens, and on hot summer evenings it wasn’t uncommon for us to be treated to ice cream for dessert.  And there was really only one item that I ever wanted to order: the sundae inside the mini plastic batting helmet.  I’ve always been susceptible to “collect them all” ploys, and combining ice cream with collectible helmets was too brilliant of a move by Dairy Queen for me to resist.  Every time we went, I’d get the helmet sundae, and we eventually amassed a stack of nested helmets that must have been three feet high.  There was no real use for the helmets once you had them, but I sure did my best to obtain one of each kind.

All of this was happening without me having even attended a real baseball game.  But with the help of the Elgin Park District, my Dad, older brother and I were about to change all that.  The park district had arranged a bus trip to Comiskey Park to see the White Sox take on the Orioles.  My Dad, having grown up in Baltimore, was game for it, and I definitely wanted to go.  My brother has never really been a sports fan, but opted to come along for the new experience and the camaraderie.  Making it a true father-sons bonding experience, we signed up.  I can still picture us about to leave the house – my Dad in his Orioles cap, me in a Sox cap we’d bought, and my brother staying neutral with a plain black baseball cap.

The game experience was a lot to take in for a kid, so my memories of that day come in bits and pieces.  I can vaguely see our seats from what I think was the upper deck.  I am fairly sure that I had a hot dog during the game.  I distinctly remember holding a fluorescent colored notepad over the railing toward the players in a fruitless attempt to obtain autographs, while my father encouraged me along.  And my Dad tried to teach me how to fill in a scorecard (that I still have), but ended up doing pretty much the whole thing himself.  I’m not sure I understood the rules of the game, much less the shorthand method for recording it, but I thought it was just the neatest thing.  And at the I-Cubs opener the other night, Stacia and I finally did fill in our first scorecard ever.

So, with all that said, you might think I’ve been a baseball fan from that day on.  Well, it didn’t end up working quite that way, though each occurrence instilled in me a little more of the love of the game.  And besides, there’s still the matter of the book and the cap that I mentioned before, right?  Well, you’ll have to wait ‘til next time for them.  I’m not quite back on deck yet, but I’ll be up soon.