Take Me Out To The Ballgame by The great Buck O’Neil.., what a gem of a man.
Growing up in Waterville in the 60’s & 70’s like I did, Opening Day was a holiday in our house. Literally! I was allowed to stay home from school and I did Opening Day big! After a hearty breakfast of Cheerios or Raisin Bran or some sort of cereal, outside with my glove I went. Depending on if we had any snow left to deal with, I’d go out back of my house and throw a rubber ball off our high roof and make like I was Yaz or Reggie Smith or Tony C and make great catch after great catch until my father pulled in the driveway for lunch in his orange Chevy C10 pickup truck. Dad, who never took any time off from work, came home for lunch at noon and then took the afternoon off. We had hot dogs on the grill for lunch (it was also Opening Day for the grill too) always with raw onions, sweet relish and yellow mustard (ketchup was not allowed on hot dogs in the Violete house) then my father and I would play pass (we didn’t call it have a catch) until 2 o’clock when it was game time. Downstairs to the TV room we went, the old, trusty Zenith 25″ floor model was ready to go. Turned her on.., and remember it took time for TV’s to “warm up” back then and watched the sometimes grainy feed of the Sox usually from Fenway but sometimes Tiger Stadium in Detroit or Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. We listened to the dulcet tones of Ned Martin and Ken Coleman and Opening Day was underway!
Opening Day 1969 stands out as one of the best of all time. The Red Sox opened in Baltimore and Tony Conigliaro was back in the Red Sox lineup after missing all of 1968 after being beaned in ‘67 by Jack Hamilton. I was a huge Tony C fan, and when he came to the plate in the ‘69 season opener in Baltimore with the game tied in the 10th inning with a runner on, I sat there with my father silently praying that he’d hit a home run. Lo and behold, he did to give the Sox the lead!
It doesn’t get much better than that!!!
How about Opening Day 1986? The Red Sox opened in Motown vs. the TIgers and Dwight Evans wasted no time in getting the Sox on the scoreboard asap!
You kind of knew something special was up with this ballclub after just one swing by Dewey. The last game of ‘86 was a lot less fun than the first game.
I love all sports but baseball is the true love of my sports life. It’s been a constant for me since the Impossible Dream of 1967. That team brought me and thousands of others into the web that baseball weaves and I’ve never been happier about something. I can’t shake it. Don’t want to shake it. I adore the game and always have. The little nuances of it. The quirkiness of it. Everything that baseball is (well, almost everything.., there are a few things I’d change but now is not the time for that) I absolutely love and always will. I will watch any baseball game I can from Little League to the Show and enjoy the game every single time.
So.., today I will leave the radio station, go hit Hanny’s for some red, snappy hot dogs, a pack of rolls, an onion (I’ve got the sweet relish and yellow mustard already) and head for home. I won’t go outside and throw a ball off a roof and make great catches like I did over 50 years ago but I’ll reminisce about those days and remember them vividly, I’ll see my old man pull into our driveway and remember when we played pass, me with my Yaz glove and he with his high school glove from 1943 (really) then I’ll pull the grill out and cook up the hot dogs, a little burnt just like we liked em and in my mind, sit down and enjoy them with my parents, the wicked cool parents who let their baseball loving son stay home and celebrate Opening Day like it should be. A holiday.
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. – Rogers Hornsby”
