I would like to take this
opportunity to wish my friend, Dina, a very happy 30th birthday. I
worked with Dina for about four or five years at the front desk of the Park
Hyatt Hotel in Toronto. And I will always remember her birthday for one very
important reason: May 6, 1986 was the day I went to see my first Major League
Baseball game.
My grade four class, as well as
the grade fives who were in the classroom beside us, took a field trip to see
the Toronto Blue Jays play the Oakland Athletics at Exhibition Stadium. For a
ten-year old who had just become hooked on baseball during the 1985 season,
this was truly a monumental event.
I remember walking into the
stadium for the first time, and being truly in awe of my surroundings, which
included all the different souvenirs that kept calling to me. I ended up buying
the 1985 Topps Team Set of baseball cards for four dollars. To put things in
perspective economically, due to the Junior Jays promotion of half-price
tickets for kids 14 and under, we got our $14 seats for seven.
Watching the Jays take batting
practice is a memory I’ll never forget (designated hitter Cliff Johnson looked
over at us and said “How ya doing?” when one of my classmates yelled “Hi
Cliff”) as well as being inches away from a Dave Stieb autograph when he picked
up his mitt and said, “Sorry, guys. Gotta go.”
The game itself was rather
disappointing. Starting pitcher Jimmy Key never made it out of the third
inning, and Oakland was up 10-0 in the fifth inning when Jays’ right-fielder
Jesse Barfield hit a home run to put Toronto on the board. Barfield would hit a
second homer in the ninth inning, making the final score 17-3 in favour of
Oakland.
A symbolic scene of the
prevailing feelings of the day was the dark clouds moving in from behind the
north grandstand in the later innings that overpowered the sunshine that had been
filling us with hope when the game started.
However, despite the thrashing,
the thrill of being at a Major League Baseball game for the first time is
something I’ll never forget. In fact, I still get a kick out of being at a ball
game, thirty years and over a hundred games (I’ve lost count, actually) later.
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