Is it too early to marinade the meat and stock up the cooler? This morning the SEC gave us our first coordinates for planning our fall football road trip.
Sept. 8: GEORGIA
Sept. 22: at South Carolina
Oct. 6: VANDERBILT
Oct. 13: ALABAMA
Oct. 27: KENTUCKY
Nov. 3: at Florida
Nov. 10: at Tennessee
Nov. 24: at Texas A&M
Jonathan would have been fourteen today.
The start of baseball season and the discussion of Albert Pujols’ future with the Cardinals, got me thinking about my son’s first trip to a professional baseball game. I had four tickets four rows behind home plate for a Sunday night nationally televised contest between our beloved St. Louis Cardinals and the powerhouse Atlanta Braves. My father, brother, niece and I were seated in the “big dog” seats at the old Busch Stadium and Jonathan was watching the game from my lap. In the green seats, you get pampered with goodies. Instead of going to the concession stands, the ushers come to you. You fill out a menu request and they serve you food and drinks until you’re ready to explode like a home run fireworks display.
When I was given these tickets, they came with very specific instructions from the generous donors: “don’t be like those people that are on their phone the whole game, because you’ll be on television every single pitch.” I happily accepted the terms with special permission to make one or two phone calls during the game.
I called Jonathan’s grandfather and told him to find the game on ESPN. I had Jonathan take his shirt off. I said, “Jonathan, look out there at the pitcher and flex your muscles for papa.” Little Hercules complied and did his part with astonishing aplomb. And I heard his papa’s loud voice on the other end of the phone: “Oh, looky there! There’s my grandson! Slim, come in here and look at your grandson on t.v.!” 
Jonathan’s first professional baseball game was one to remember. Rafael Furcal completed an unassisted triple play against the Cardinals, an unusual feat in the history of baseball. And one future Hall of Famer, a young Albert Pujols, hit an 8th innning home run off of another future Hall of Famer, the veteran John Smoltz. That key hit extended Albert’s hitting streak and produced the go-ahead run. The Cardinals won the game 3-2.
Yesterday, Mark McGwire finally came clean and confessed to using steroids during the 90s. The return of McGwire to the news, after years of being out of the spotlight, has reminded me of the greatest game I ever saw.
In the summer of 1998, I was fortunate enough to watch McGwire hit home run #62, the line-drive shot that broke Roger Maris’ previous record for home runs in a season. As Tom Verducci wrote for Sports Illustrated that summer:
The home run is America—appealing to its roots of rugged individualism and its fascination with grand scale. Americans gape at McGwire’s blasts the same way they do at Mount Rushmore, Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building. "We have," Cubs manager Jim Riggelman said before Tuesday’s game, "a fascination with power."
That summer was magical. McGwire was on a torrid pace to break one of sports’ most coveted records and one of the longest standing ones. In the second half of the baseball season, we spent every summer night rushing to the television when McGwire came up to bat. If we were barbequing, we went inside. If out to dinner, we joined the rest of the patrons to catch what was going on. Regular scheduled programs were interrupted for a live look-in on the individual at-bats of McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
Tickets became increasingly harder to come by as fans were flocking to the stadium in the hopes of catching a piece of history.
My wife at the time, Kris, knew how much I wanted to see a game at Busch Stadium and one day she called me and said, “Hey, I want to do something for your birthday. Can you be free Sunday night or Tuesday night?”
I told her I wouldn’t likely be free on Sunday evening and then she said, “Well, I might as well just tell you, I’m here at Schnucks and I’m trying to get two tickets for us to see a Cardinals game.”
“Kris, that would be awesome but I’m pretty sure they’re all sold out.”
“Well, the lady here says she can get us two seats but the only catch is that she doesn’t have two seats side-by-side. She has individual seats but the seats are one row in front of the other.”
Through the phone, I could hear the Schnucks’ customer service representative say, “Now honey, I can’t promise you these tickets will be here in the next few minutes. They’re going fast.”
I told Kris, “By all means, grab them.” And so she did. We had tickets for a game the following week, on Tuesday, September 8, 1998 against the Chicago Cubs. Friends of ours had tickets the day before, a game in which Big Mac hit the record-tying home run in the first inning. I nervously watched the rest of the game hoping that he wouldn’t hit it number 62. Fortunately, he only got one that afternoon.
The following day Kris and I made our way to St. Louis. When we were on the Metro Rail, the conductor said, “Mark my word, folks, today Big Mac will hit #62”. The atmosphere outside the stadium was electric. We found out that tickets were selling for $400. Kris was tempted to sell hers and I told her if she did, I’d meet her after the game!
We got to our seats and we were near the left-field foul pole. There were nine-seats in our rows, and Kris and I had the middle seat in both. The guy next to me said, “Now, I don’t normally do this but if Big Mac breaks the record tonight don’t be surprised if I give you a hug. We’re all family tonight.”
There was a buzz in the air when the game started. The Cardinals were playing their hated rivals, the Cubbies from Chicago, with people all over the world watching the game. Roger Maris’ family was at the game, seated near the Cardinals dugout. Flash bulbs were going off every time McGwire came up to bat.
In the bottom of the 4th inning, McGwire turned on a first-pitch fastball from Steve Traschel and sent it just over the left field wall, right below where we were seated. The record home run was his shortest shot of the year, traveling 341 feet. Pandemonium ensued. While McGwire circled the bases, people were jumping up and down. Strangers hugged and high-fived each other. They stopped play for around ten minutes or so and I ran out to the concourse to snatch up a few souvenirs from the vendors. Baseballs marked, “I Was There” were selling for $20. After the game, Commissioner Bud Selig was on hand to honor the historic achievement. When we left the stadium, commemorative editions of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch were already for sale. (That night also happened to be the first major league game of J.D. Drew, who now plays for the Boston Red Sox. He came into left field and had his first two at-bats that evening.) We stayed in St. Louis late into the night to take in the celebration before eventually returning to Columbia.
I couldn’t imagine a better birthday present for a sports fan, especially one who had cheered for the Cardinals since childhood. I told Kris it would be equivalent to getting her much coveted tickets to see Mikhail Baryshnikov perform live in some fantastic venue.
It was an unforgettable night in the history of sports.
Caleb, Lance, Noah and I watched the Missouri game last night. Despite the outcome, it was great fun. It was reminiscent of the last year’s game against Kansas at Arrowhead. We lost that riveting game while snow flurries were coming down; this one took place in a hard, driving rain. Decked out in our ponchos, we stood up all four quarters. Because of a power outage, the game was ‘old school.’ The new scoreboard remained off and they didn’t have a public announcer talking between plays. There wasn’t the constant barrage of pre-recorded music and advertisements. Sara Evans sang the National Anthem but because the stadium speakers were off you couldn’t really hear the song.
The evening started promising enough. I cooked some chili in the morning and came home from work with the smell of dinner in the crock pot. We then watched the first half of the Cardinals and Dodgers playoff game before heading out to the Missouri game. Halfway through the first quarter I received a text message that said:
Cardinals lost 3-2. Holliday dropped the third out. Hit him right in the nuts. He looked like Duncan out there. Can’t believe it.
Then the Tigers had a second half collapse and the Huskers scored four touchdowns in the final quarter to win the game 27-12. It was a rough day for Missouri sports fans.
A journal of reflections on things seen and unseen, wimsical and wise, ordinary and odd, magical and mundane
