The worst time of year is almost here.
In about three weeks, give or take a day or three, the baseball season will be over.
There is nothing in my life with the possible exception of reading books that has given me as much pleasure as baseball, and there were never more enjoyable summers in my career as a journalist than those I spent covering ballgames.
Whether it was 1982-83 in Gastonia, N.C., covering low Class A ball or 1990-91 in Los Angeles covering the Dodgers, showing up at a ballpark evening after evening in the summertime was as close to wonderful as it ever got.
Ironically, the one season I covered a team night after night, home and away, was my last. In 1995 I covered high Class A ball in the California League, driving to city after city for three days at a time to write about the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. Most of the players I saw that year never made it to the big leagues, but the Quakes’ Derrek Lee played 15 years in the majors, hit 331 home runs and won a World Series ring in 2003 with Florida.
I visited Lake Elsinore, San Bernardino, Adelanto, Lancaster, Bakersfield, Visalia, Modesto, Stockton and San Jose, and my only regret is that I don’t remember more of the details. Some of the ballparks were dumps. At least one or two were wonderful.
Between 1957 and the present, I have seen games in 21 different major league stadiums, 10 of which no longer exist. I have seen games in three different stadiums in Atlanta, games pitched by Steve Carlton (1984), Stephen Strasburg (2012) and Max Scherzer (2018).
I saw Fernando Valenzuela pitch a no-hitter in Dodger Stadium in 1990 and missed a no-hitter by Kevin Gross the same season and a perfect game by Dennis Martinez the next year because of enforced days off.
I saw two All-Star Games — 1969 in Washington and 1992 in San Diego — and a World Series game in 1985 in St. Louis.
I saw one of Roger Maris’s 61 home runs in 1961 and interviewed him 21 years later in Gastonia.
I never met Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays, but I sat and watched several hours of minor league baseball with Hank Aaron in 1984.
I wasn’t any closer than 650 miles to any of the games, but the feeling of joy I felt when the Washington Nationals won the 2019 World Series was unmatched by anything that didn’t involve people I love.
I would love to have met Jim Bouton, even if it was just to tell him how much his book “Ball Four” had meant to me. I’m not sure I ever enjoyed the last paragraph of a book as much as his when writing about how former pitcher Jim O’Toole was playing semipro ball after his career was over.
I never played organized ball, but I know exactly how he felt.
I’ll be staring out my window soon.