Monday memory: my first MLB game

It wasn't the place I thought I would go, but it was good nonetheless.

One of a handful of MLB stadiums I’ve been to - in this case, twice. I think this was my second, so read on to see what was my first. Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash

Last Thursday I alluded to this at The Knothole, but that day marked a double anniversary: my first two MLB ballgames. While most people would guess that I, as a Tigers fan since the days of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, would have gone to Tiger Stadium, I never did get the chance - my parents weren’t baseball fans and it wasn’t a outing they would want to do because I was the only seamhead in the family.

So it wasn’t until I went to school away from home (Miami University, in lovely Oxford, Ohio) that I had the opportunity to go to see the big leaguers. Oxford is about 45 minutes or so north of Cincinnati, and when I met a new friend who was into baseball as much as I was (probably at a college baseball game, since I blew off a lot of Friday studios to check out doubleheaders against whoever the Mid-American Conference would throw at us) Chris invited me to go. Maybe it was my first exposure to a religious person, and the lessons he may have tried to teach me on the trip there and back didn’t take right away, but regardless we headed on down to Riverfront Stadium on a cool April night with a small crowd rattling around the stadium. We were up in the cheap seats, but we were at the game and it was great to watch the legendary Pete Rose at the start of the season he would eventually become the all-time hit leader.

In the game, the Reds had a little bonus baseball, coming back to walk off the San Francisco Giants 4-3. (Thanks to Baseball Reference for confirming my recollection that the Reds won an extra inning game. The memory gets hazy because of the next part of the story, and conflation of two similar events.)

One year later to the day, some buddies from “The Castle” and I took yet another senior trip, this time to Riverfront Stadium. (It was a little different than our usual fishing wade up Four Mile Creek from the covered bridge north of town.) That year it was a Friday night, so the crowd was larger and again we sat up in the nosebleed red seats. (Both times it was on the first base side.) That year the foe was the Houston Astros, who as we later found out, were on their way to winning the division. (The Reds finished second both years: first to the Dodgers and then to the Astros.) While it didn’t hurt them directly in the standings, the Reds couldn’t make the comeback in that game, falling to the Astros 6-4.

That was a different experience, piling into a car with several of your buddies. I don’t think we came back home that night; instead I believe we slept over with my friend Todd’s family since he lived in the Cincinnati suburbs. It was a fun experience, something to jell a little more before we went our separate ways less than a month later. It’s a bit sad to think I haven’t seen any of these guys since probably the early 1990s, as they scattered around the country. (Heck, it’s been 20-plus years since I’ve been to good old Miami U. Alumni Weekend and homecoming isn’t the day trip from here like it is from the Toledo area.)

Eventually I did make it to Tiger Stadium a dozen or so years later, just before they closed the place. In that case, it was a Sunday game where they bitchslapped the Orioles and after the game they allowed people to go down and walk on the field since the team was heading out for a roadtrip. So I stood where Alan Trammell stood and my glove had real Tiger Stadium dirt rubbed into it. (I’m still pissed someone stole that glove at a Shorebirds game.) Standing there, it looked like the stadium was right on top of you in a way that Perdue Stadium can’t, even from the perspective of when I threw out the first pitch there many moons ago.

Since then I’ve been to a handful of other MLB stadia around the Midwest - about the same time I made it to Tiger Stadium, I was part of a group that went to the Jake (Jacobs Field, where the Indians play) during a state YR convention. I recall they played the Angels and we were in the Uecker seats out in far right field. I went back there again on a trip back to Ohio a few years later.

I’ve also had some unique experiences at Comerica Park, the newer home of the Tigers. In my first trip there, I saw a guy named Shane Halter play all nine positions on a gorgeous October afternoon, the last game of the 2000 season. I also saw them get destroyed by the Indians (much to my chagrin, although that wasn’t so unusual back then) and won a bed seeing them play the Florida Marlins.

I’ve been to the old Busch Stadium with family, taken in PNC Park in Pittsburgh (besides Comerica, maybe my favorite) and made it to the GAB in Cincinnati, too. Those were part of the roadtrips I described last year on The Knothole.

An ode to the summer road trip

More locally, I’ve been to Camden Yards but not since 2016. A few years earlier I saw Nationals Stadium as a 45th birthday present from my wife. But you always remember your first, and when your second is on the same date, you recall that, too.

In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.