Stay off the lawn!

A kid can learn a lot at a baseball game. The most important lesson, of course, is how to act—or not act—in social settings. 

Oh yes, you can see where this is going already, right? But guess what… forget it. We’re not going to even mention those knuckleheads that jumped on the field at Citizens Bank Park the past two nights and the criminal vomitter from a few weeks back. If there were a way to go back into a time machine and Photoshop them out of attendance at the ballpark, then yes, that would be infinitely better than taking a taser to their backsides.

Unfortunately there are no time machines except for in the movies and people can’t be Photoshopped out of existence. What a gyp.

Anyway, we try to focus on the positive here, so let’s just say that one has to work very hard to have a bad time at a ballpark or an arena. It happens sometimes, and based on the latest events reported out of Citizens Bank Park, it has been happening a lot. The shame of that is there are some really good fans that get out to games and it’s possible that the really good fans are being scared away from going to games.

And no, that fear does not come from the price of tickets.

I always relate going to games to the way it was when I was a kid. Frankly, there weren’t too many things that were more fun than the handful of games my family went to every year. Luckily, some of those games are burned in my brain like the time Larry Bird, at the height of his ability, dropped a triple-double on the Sixers at the Spectrum and used one ridiculous move that I hadn’t seen before or since.

Then there was the final game of the 1982 baseball season at Memorial Stadium where Robin Yount went 3-for-4 with two homers to overshadow a pitching matchup featuring future Hall-of-Famers Jim Palmer and Don Sutton. More notably, Yount’s heroics cinched the 1982 AL MVP Award for him and got the Brewers into the playoffs for the first time ever.

There were other events, too, like the beginning of the Red Sox swoon in 1978 that we saw from behind home plate at Memorial Stadium, which was the perfect vantage point to see a home run hit by Jim Rice that may have just landed. We were also there on a sun-drenched Sunday where Cal Ripken appeared in the very first game of his historical streak. The thing that made that day stand out was that Toronto pitchers Jim Gott and Roy Lee Jackson combined to one-hit the Orioles in one the most boring games I ever sat and watched. Rick Dempsey got a one-out single in the fifth, so there was no drama whatsoever. Worse, it was a combined one-hitter, which seems rather devious when you think about it.

Nevertheless, we were able to have fun at the games without being jerks about it. Sure, most of that has to do with the fact that we were really into the teams and the sports, but that didn’t seem so extraordinary at the time. We didn’t need dollar-dog nights or bobbleheads to get us out to the park. Maybe it was a different time or perhaps our senses weren’t numbed or dulled down by an over proliferation of media coming from all directions, but the game, a ticket stub and a program was enough.

Maybe because of our ability in interact or communicate with anyone (or anything), there is an attitude that the individual is part of the show, too. It wasn’t so much as we knew our place way back when, but maybe we had a little more respect for others’ property. The game and the field belonged to someone else and the only way to get the honor of running, hitting or shooting on it was by earning it.

True story: in 10 years of exclusively writing about baseball, I walked onto the actual playing surface just one time. It was to retrieve an errant baseball and then fire it back to the kid retrieving them, but even then I was told—under no uncertain terms—to get off the field.

That’s someone else’s work space, not mine.

From those days of going to games as a kid, there was one fan we saw as the ultimate booster of his team. He didn’t have a fancy job, or seats in a special box or anything, he was just a guy who liked to hang out with his friends in Section 34 at Memorial Stadium after finishing his shift as a cab driver in Baltimore.

Oh yes, we loved Wild Bill Hagy.

Wild Bill came from the Dundalk section of town and did nothing more than cheer for his team. In fact, he was so good at cheering for his team that everyone else followed his lead, which included his trademark of spelling out the world ORIOLES with his limbs and shouting, “Oh!” during the final stanza of the “Star Spangled Banner.” That was it. Wild Bill was just a fan—a genuine fan without any airs or pretension.

Better yet, Wild Bill didn’t have to run onto the field or break the law in order to get attention. He didn’t have fancy seats or have ins with any of the team’s brass. He was just a guy who liked the Orioles.

What’s wrong with that?

Memory lane

I was at the first game of Cal Ripken’s streak. Yes I was. It was a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon game between the Orioles and the Toronto Blue Jays and we had seats on the third-base side at Memorial Stadium. We were there, watching history that we didn’t we know was happening.

Actually, I didn’t even know I was at The First Game until nearly 2,131 Orioles games later. In fact, it was an offhand comment by the broadcaster calling one of Ripken’s record-breaking games in September of 1995 when it hit me that I was there on that sunny Sunday.

Now I have been to thousands of games and seen just about everything there is to see at a Major League game. I saw a no-hitter (Kevin Millwood), a couple of cycles (David Bell and Brad Wilkerson), a three-home run game (Andruw Jones), a team sew up the division on the final day of the season (Milwaukee Brewers in 1982), and a team win the NLCS (Phillies in 1993). I’ve also seen a few one-hitters, including one by Randy Wolf in the final weeks of the 2001 season where it didn’t seem as if he even worked up a sweat.

Needless to say there are hundreds of games that I attended that I don’t even remember. It’s not that I’m not losing my mind, it’s just that the Phillies have played a lot of games since I started this job in 2000.

But when one is a kid the games seemed to matter much more. They were a big deal. Better yet, I can recall sitting behind home plate at a 1978 game between the Orioles and Red Sox at Memorial Stadium in better detail than I can remember the last game I attended. From that game in ’78 I can remember peering through the backstop and a titanic home run hit by Jim Rice that soared over the bleachers in left field and disappeared into the night. I also remember Larry Harlow leading off the game with a homer off Red Sox starter Dennis Eckersley and Carlton Fisk starting a bench-clearing incident.

From the last game I covered all I remember is the game starting after 11 p.m., Ken Mandel taking a header dressed as Thomas Jefferson, and the Phillies sitting in a bus waiting to go to the airport as I walked out of the stadium at 3 a.m.

Nevertheless, it was remembering an odd one-hitter that jogged my memory and made me realize I was at Ripken’s streak starter. Odd? Well, yeah. It was odd because Jim Gott pitched six innings before turning it over to Roy Lee Jackson for the final nine outs. Only Rick Dempsey’s single between short and third in the fifth ruined the combined no-no.

Who wouldn’t remember a combined one-hitter? Better yet, who wouldn’t remember the most boring game they ever attended to that point?

Yet through all the countless times I’ve seen Cal Ripken play, that goofy one-hitter is the one game I’ll remember the most. Not the two-home run game against the Brewers on the final day of the ’82 season, or the day-in and day-out efforts at Memorial Stadium, Camden Yards, the Vet, Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium. Instead, it’s an oh-fer at long forgotten ballpark in a non-descript day in May.

How that for a Hall of Famer?

Ripken, of course, was elected to the Hall of Fame today along with Tony Gwynn in what will be most remember for who did not get voted into so-called baseball immortality. But that last part is for a more in-depth discussion later, because I’m not really sure what the Hall of Fame means anymore – and that’s not to say Ripken and Gywnn aren’t worthy, because they are. It’s just that based on who has been deemed worthy of induction and who has not, maybe it mysterious criteria that makes one a Hall of Famer is arbitrary and based on whimsy.

But that’s for another day.

Ripken and Gwynn could be the first inductees to the Hall of Fame whose careers I was old enough to appreciate and remember. Ripken’s ethic and Gwynn’s swing and focus were artful, and never more evident than in a doubleheader at the Vet on July 22, 1994, when sitting along the third-base side (again) I saw him go 6-for-8 with four RBIs and a pair of doubles. The most baffling part about those games was how the Phillies figured out how to get Gwynn out twice. It seemed as if every pitch thrown was going to be knocked into the outfield for a hit.

Then again, Gwynn always seemed to be a hit waiting to happen.