I was working my way through Ken Burns’ wonderful 1994 film “Baseball” yet another time when I came across something I had forgotten.
It was fairly late in Part One, which covered the game from 1840 to the end of the 19th century, and Bob Costas was talking about his love of the game.
He said he had started caring about the game when he was 5 years old and had followed it ever since.
“Is there anything else that you care about as a child, as an adult and then feel the same way for your entire life?” he asked rhetorically.
Certainly not it mine.
I was 6 when I started following the game and 47 the last time I played it. It was essentially a pickup game between the coaches in our local youth baseball league. I went 2-for-4 and my happiest, goofiest moment was when I laid down a perfect drag bunt and beat the throw to first base.
Idiot me, I pulled a hamstring.
Even dumber, I stayed in the game and in the last inning, I pulled the other hamstring.
Before my 10th birthday, I saw ballgames in three major league parks — Crosley Field in Cincinnati, Municipal Stadium in Cleveland and Yankee Stadium in New York. Between 1984 and 2018, I saw games in three major league parts in the same city. Fulton County Stadium, Turner Field and Truist Park in Atlanta.
I’m not sure there was ever a place as consistently wonderful to be as a ballpark, whether it was a dingy park in the low minors or a secular cathedral like Dodger Stadium.
The 1990 and ’91 seasons were the most spectacular for me. Those were the two years I covered Dodgers home games, maybe 140-150 games total. But the last year I covered the game might have been the most wonderful of all.
I covered a Class A Padres farm club in the California League, and for the only time in my life I covered the entire schedule home and away. I saw games in Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, Lake Elsinore, Adelanto, Lancaster, Bakersfield, Visalia, Modesto, Stockton and San Jose.
And one evening in Adelanto, I saw the rarest of all baseball occurrences — an unassisted triple play.
In 2017, I finally made it to Cooperstown, N.Y., to see the baseball Hall of Fame. The picture above, statues of Johnny Podres and Roy Campanella in the 1955 World Series, is in the back yard of the Hall.
And in 2019, a month before I turned 70, my favorite team finally won the Series when the Washington Nationals came from behind to beat Houston in seven games.
I don’t know if they’ll win again in my lifetime, but I know on my deathbed, I’ll think about friends and family, people I have loved and who have loved me and I’ll think back of my life.
And I’ll think about baseball.
Bob Costas was right.