Take Me Out With The Crowd!
It's a classic memory for a boy in the United States, that first ball game. Where I grew up, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, baseball was everywhere. It seemed that every time someone turned on the TV, Turner Broadcasting was showing a Braves game.
My entire family loved the game, and in those years, the Braves were a darned good team. On weekends and at family gatherings, we could often be found in the front yard of someone's house, trying to play the game like on television but without a line drive straight through the living room window.
Surrounded by such diehard fans of the sport, it was inevitable that my first baseball game, and my first live sports game ever, was going to be at an age when I was almost too young to remember it. While I don't remember the game itself, the day it occurred, or even the year, there are distinct visions that I will never forget.
The first time a young boy is exposed to such a spectacle as a home team sports game is a truly awesome experience. Never before had I encountered such zeal among people. The giant foam tomahawks, painted faces, and sheer vigor of the crowd was something to behold. Wild-eyed, I turned my head every which way to try to take it all in. There were more sights than I could see, but I was going to do my best.
I recall that one of the things that I found most interesting were the ticket scalpers. So young, I couldn't understand what these men were doing if folks like my parents already had their tickets. One [man] in particular caught my attention, and I could do little more than stand and stare, admiring the zest with which he tried to sell the gleaming tickets in his hand.
I remember wandering the large hallways surrounding the stadium, clutching my mitt so that I might catch a fly ball once we found our seats. When we finally made it to those seats, had I known any better, I'd have complained about being in the nosebleed section. I didn't care though; I was at a baseball game!
We were to far away from the field for it to hold my attention for long. The players were mere ants on an anthill, but the JumboTron, with all it's animations and cuts from camera to camera did a fairly fine job that I was sure to appreciate. As my child's brain began to wander again, I couldn't help but think of the hallways again. I wanted to go back through them and inspect all of the stands and carts and admire their goods. An excuse to go out there is what I needed...the bathroom! A child's favorite excuse for anything.
As my dad an I made our way through the hallways (it seemed to be a mile to the restrooms), I found myself quite disappointed. All of the hustle and bustle had gone away, and everyone but the hot dog vendor had closed up shop. I guess I just hadn't expected this area to clear out so well for the game. I did, however, see the one thing that I wanted to see most: the fitted baseball caps.
There was something special about a fitted baseball cap that put it in a league of its own among caps. As far as I knew it was a right of passage that I so very badly wanted to earn. When I asked for one, my dad was sure to remind me that he wasn't made of money as we returned to our seats.
For some reason, I've never lost that reverence for the fitted ball cap, and the two most outstanding memories of that game are the rack of fitted Braves caps and that man outside the stadium, gleaming tickets in hand. Perhaps merely as a result of the reverence I held for those caps, my family's zeal infected me, too, and I never held any other game or contest in the same regard. Not even UFC fights, which, while brutal, can be pretty darned cool.
While that's mostly the end of my memory, except for riding on the crowded public rail system back to our car, which was always fun, I can't say that I'm sad that I don't remember more. That was the beginning of my life-long love affair with the game, and those few memories of that day are things that I still appreciate to this day.