October 29

And now for something completely different...

And I do mean COMPLETELY different. I mean Chicago has the World Series trophy. How different is that?

The first ball game I ever went to was at Comiskey Park in Chicago. It was a day game.

I was lucky as a kid seeing baseball on the North Side and the South Side. I got to see some of the greats, some of the men in the Hall of Fame today. Guys like Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox turning a double play. Guys like Early Wynn pitch one of his 300 wins and Fergie Jenkins get his 3000th K. Guys like Ernie Banks and Billy Williams hit home runs and field with grace. And those were just the Chicago players.

I got to see Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. Juan Marichal and Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson. Stan Musial and Lou Brock. That was just in the National League. I saw Brooks Robinson and Whitey Ford. Al Kaline and Rod Carew. Hundreds of men who didn't make the millions made by today's players, but were every bit as good those today who do.

I once got to see Mickey Mantle hit a home run from each side of the plate in the same game.

I got to see two triple plays in a double header that was scheduled as a double header and not as part of a make up game due to rain. I got to see Musial's 3000th hit and Rose's hit that tied him with Cobb. I got to see a score board explode and disco records destroyed and a team that played in shorts.

But in all that time I never got to see a World Series title come to either side of town.

Neither did 99.9 percent of the millions of people who have ever lived in Chicago.

Until now.

And that brings me back to that first game at Comiskey. My old man took me. I could smell the grass even in the upper deck where we sat. We were behind the old open air press box, filled with phone cables and manual typewriters where cigarette smoking gents in fedoras sat hunched over scribbling on scorecards and making notes for the stories they would file.

I took it all in. The vendors selling peanuts and beer and hot dogs. I don't remember any Cracker Jack even if it is in the song about taking me out to the ball game. It was my old man who took me out, and the reason I wanted to be there, to share the moment with him and I didn't even expect a prize in the box. Heck, when the seventh inning stretch came around, people got up and actually stretched because their bodies ached after sitting so long in those tight cramped wooden seats. There was no singing, badly or otherwise. Now people sing, but the seats are still always cramped. Some things never change.

When I go to the ball park now, I still smell the grass, at least where there is grass, and I still hear the vendors selling peanuts and beer and hot dogs. Maybe I'll have a brat, but anything else sold at a ball park is sacrilegious. And I don't understand why we want to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" when we're already there at the park.

But I was there on a hot summer day, taking it all in. I was young and still impressionable about such things. The old man explained the nuances of keeping score and how the players on the field moved in unison on every play. He told me not to watch just the pitcher and the batter, but everyone else. How the catcher ran toward first to backup the play on a ground ball or how somebody was always behind the catcher on a play at the plate. How the fielders covered bases on a bunt, how the outfielders knew where the ball was headed as soon as it came off the bat, how I could tell if a ball was going to be caught by watching the outfielder before the ball was even halfway to him.

It was an extra inning game that day, back when day games were still more popular than night games, and when Wrigley was still the only Park without lights. Comiskey had them, but games could still be called. As the game went on, the lights came on and the crowd cheered, not because of the wonders of lighting, but rather that somebody made the decision to play the game to its conclusion, the way the game is supposed to be played.

Sometime in the later innings, the old man was snoozing, nodding off as he was always wont to do. He would do that in later life on the porch while the ball game was on the radio or on TV. He could be snoring loudly, and we'd wake him. "Dad, wake up. You're snoring."

"Nope. Just resting my eyes," he would say. So we'd test him, and some how, no matter how sound his sleep, he knew who was up to bat, the count on the batter, and the score. The old man always knew the score.

The old man was nodding. The pressmen in the box in front of us were hunched over, cigarette smoke rising from their mouths as they took notes. A ball rose toward our seats in a high arc. Like one the outfielders who knew where to run to when the ball was hit, I knew where it was headed. I knew exactly where it would land and in what seats right behind the press box.

I nudged the old man, and said, no, yelled at the top of my lungs, "Dad! Wake Up! There's a foul ball coming at us!"

Dad was over six feet tall, and his arms were long. He opened his eyes, looked up, reached up with those long arms, his hands higher than other people now standing around him. The ball landed softly in that wide perfect flesh. A perfect catch. He looked at the ball briefly and then handed it to me. I swear I heard him say, "Just resting."

It's why I still love baseball.

The old man is gone now, more than just resting. But somehow I believe he knows how Chicago scored in the Series this year.