THE FIRST GAME
by Glenn Stout
I don’t remember the score. That’s the funny thing about
your first big league game -- the score is usually the least important thing
about it.
I grew up outside Columbus, Ohio, at a time when trips to
big league towns like Cincinnati or Cleveland were long journeys far beyond the
family budget. But Columbus had the Triple-A Columbus Jets of the International
League, a farm team of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and that usually made up for it.
We’d go a half a dozen or so times a year – if you were under 12 you could buy
a “Jet Badge” for $1 that got you in free with an adult, not a bad deal. The
Jets were almost always good – I remember seeing Richie Hebner, Fred Patek, Manny
Sanguillen, Bob Robertson, Dave Cash, Al Oliver and a host of other players who
went on to pretty good major league careers. Johnny Pesky even spent a few
years there as manager in the late ‘60s.
We usually sat in general admission seats, but the man who
owned the concrete company my Dad worked for, Ralph Anderson, was also
president of the Jets. He liked my Dad, and once a year we got to sit in his
box on the roof. There was nothing “luxury” about it but the view – lux boxes
had yet to be invented. It was a simple wood box with a window covered with
chicken wire to keep you safe from foul balls.
Still, it wasn’t the big leagues, and by the time I turned
10 my parents knew that, eventually, they were gonna have to take the kid to a
real ballgame.
Back then, most major league teams still barnstormed their
way north, playing exhibitions as they travelled. Sometime late that winter an
ad appeared in the Columbus Dispatch
announcing an exhibition between the Reds and Detroit Tigers just before
Opening Day.
To this day, I don’t know exactly how it happened, but
somehow my Dad scored four tickets. Not just any four tickets, either, but four
tickets in the third row behind the
Tigers dugout, enough for the entire family. I almost wore the tickets out,
looking at them ahead of time.
It didn’t matter that it was an exhibition game and even
then I already hated the Reds – these were major
league players whose names I already knew – Rose, Perez, Lee May, and a
catcher named Johnny Bench who was the Rookie of the Year in ’68, a team that would
soon be known as the Big Red Machine. And the Tigers, my Dad’s favorite team, were
Word Series defending champions – Bill Freehan, Dick McAuliffe, Norm Cash,
Denny McClain, Mickey Lolich and my Dad’s favorite, Al Kaline.
In a surprise, it was warm that day, and sunny, and for once
we went early, hours before the game, to try to get autographs and watch batting
practice. I’d never been able to do either before, but damned if some of the
Tigers didn’t come out of the dugout to sign, and while roaming under the
stands my brother and I kept running into players.
Most were nice, and even when they weren’t, they were
memorable. I saw Tony Perez speaking to someone in Spanish, a language I don’t
think I had ever heard before. I interrupted, and asked him for his autograph.
He turned and looked at me – a real live major leaguer
looking me in the eye. And then he
spoke, saying something else I’d never heard before: “Go f*** yourself, kid.” Some language is universal,
and I got the message.
It didn’t matter. Everyone was in a good mood. I got to eat
as many hot dogs and “Jet Bars” – orange Creamsicles – as I could. Even my
mother had fun, laughing herself to tears as an older woman behind us got drunk
and spent the whole game thinking the Tigers were the Red.
I can’t remember who pitched
for either team – probably some minor leaguers, because the Reds opened the
next day in Cincinnati and Detroit at home a day later. But I do remember Al Kaline
hitting a home run – someplace, we have a slide of him slowly running the bases
– and at one point in the game Willie Horton came
out of the dugout and handed out both parts of a broken bat – some kids on either
side both had longer reaches than I did, so I missed out. And after the game,
we gathered around the buses carrying member of both teams, passed them our
scorecards and both came back covered with signatures, Kaline and Freehan, Cash
and McLain, Horton and Lolich, and Bench, Rose, Gary Nolan, Lee May - even my new language instructor, Tony Perez.
So who won that day? That’s easy…
I did.