The Old Ball Game

I've always been a baseball fan, I played in little league and in high school, the movie "Field of Dreams" still chokes me up at the end...
"oh yes, they'll come, Ray!..."
I went to my first game when I was 5 years old, the Giants vs. St. Louis at Candlestick Park. My mom and her friend took me along. I don't remember every detail, but it was a weekday game, and my mom's bowling league friend Jo Crane drove in the T-Bird that she owned at the time, but would later sell to my parents.
Candlestick was an open end stadium at the time, and it was cold and windy, but the crowd was enthusiastic because the Giants were in the World Series the season before, but they lost to the Yankees in Game 7. My mom was a huge Giants fan, and still is!
I remember bouncing on her knee when the stadium organist would play the 'mexican hat dance'...la-la-la-LA-la-la-CLAP-CLAP...
"oh look! see Danny? there's Willie Mays!"
Well the Giants lost that day, because all I remember Jo Crane saying on the way home was, "wellll, you can't win 'em all..."

Fast forward to 1968 when a new team moved to Oakland, from Kansas City...the Oakland A's!
Living in San Jose at the time, the Oakland Coliseum was much closer so we went to some of those games, and then the A's got good...they won three World Series in a row and by god they became my heroes when I was growing up! I was in junior high and what better time to choose and assign heroes when you're that age...I chose the Oakland A's.
And I've been a fan ever since. Though not as much 'heroes' now, but simply a fan.
It's hard to explain being a "fan"...it derives from the word 'fanatic' which makes sense in some cases, but for me it represents a kind of continuity, or an institution in which you can remain loyal. Year after year...but it's a safe kind of loyalty, where the only betrayal is losing a game...when there will always be tomorrow's game. (other kinds of betrayals notwithstanding, like the 1919 White Sox, steroids, etc...)

But I'm a casual fan, certainly not one of those intense fans who dress up in gaudy outfits for every game, or decorate their homes with shrines to their ballclub. I remember meeting one fan like that, Marge Wallace, but she was an eccentric, bless her heart...

From about 1983 to 1993, I lived in the East Bay, very close to the Oakland Coliseum, therefore, I went to tons of A's games, sometimes up to 40 games a season, and I would mostly sit in the bleachers back then, usually in the same spot, this was back when they were 'real' bleachers made out of wood...and season after season, I recognized the same people who would come too, and sit in their regular spots....a father who brought his young 3 year old daughter, she would sit on his shoulders until she got tired and would take a nap...a young family and their blue ice chest full of the tastiest looking sandwiches and treats, you could tell she had prepared them all morning...the group of college aged yahoos who sat down near the fence, the ringleader was a blond girl always in her bikini top, reveling in the attention...and sure enough, when the A's were in the playoffs, the camera's zoomed in on her on national TV...
There was also one guy who intrigued me...a solitary black man who looked 'hard' and sullen, but he would be there every weekend. I always wondered what his personal story was, you can't help but wonder about anyone's personal story, especially in an environment that is ideal for people-watching...One day between innings, the PA was blasting "Soul Man" by the Blues Brothers, and these two kids started dancing in the aisle, they were good! One kid was doing Michael Jackson moves and the other looked like Opie Taylor but he was holding his own...they were entertaining the entire section and as they all laughed and clapped, I glanced over at the sullen black guy, he was grinning for the first time...and I grinned with him...
Such are the many scenes of going to games...not just on the field, but in the crowd...I'm still thrilled to have seen Nolan Ryan pitch his no-hitter, I saw guys like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax...I saw that guy's little girl in the bleachers grow up to be a teen...year after year there in the bleachers...
"People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come." - Field of Dreams