Seeing Craig's discovery that Kirby Puckett was the first MLB player he ever saw at bat in person, it made me wonder who mine is. This is complicated by the fact that I'm pretty hazy on the details of my first MLB game. There are two contenders:
1. A game I saw with a group of altar boys against the still-new Mariners, or
2. A game I saw with a group taken by the police department against... someone. I want to say the Kansas City Royals. I could be very wrong.
I tend to think it was the first one, and my best guess is that it would have been 1978 or 1979. Possibly even 1977, but I don't think it was that early.
It pretty much had to be a Saturday afternoon game, as we were out of school and it's not like our priest could have taken us to a Sunday afternoon game, what with work and all.
Thanks to Retrosheet, the most likely candidate for my first batter seen in person is Julio Cruz. If the game was in 1979, there's an outside chance that it was Larry Milbourne. But I don't think so, as I'm pretty sure the Sox won the game, and the candidate game that Milbourne led off in was a Mariners win.
I suppose this is pretty good, given that I can't even remember the last Sox game I went to. I don't think we went in 2005 at all. And if we did, it was clearly memorable.
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2 comments:
As long as we're sharing, apparently the first batter I saw was Claudell Washington from the Braves in a 10-4 win over the
Phillies, setting the course for many, many future games. May 3, 1986 - I still have the ticket.
No memories of the game, but I do remember that the Phils used to give tickets to straight A students when I was in school. They were always 600 or 700 level seats - the nosebleeds at the Vet - and always against either the Expos or National League West teams - games the Phillies were even less likely to sell out then most. For this one, I was there with 20,510 of my closest friends.
Chris
Technically speaking, the first major league hitter I saw bat was Horace Clarke, a 2B with the Yankees, a game the Sox won 2-0 (Sep 6, 1972). Given my age at the time, though, there's a good chance I didn't see him hit :-)
That being said, the first game I really remember was May 8, 1977 an early birthday present from my Mom's co-workers (and my babysitters) Lena and Lydia. Dewey hit a game winning homerun in the 6th in a nail-biting 4-3 game. The first batter for the Angels - Bobby Grich.
A sad footnote on Kirby's passing. I still remember those Sleeper Hall days when Malcolm would brag on how well he knew Kirby growing up. We all thought he was full of it, until we went to a Twins game at Fenway with great seats down the 3B line and Malcolm threw out a "shout" to Kirby on his way to the dugout and got a big old smile. Go figure.
BTW, I noticed a Shaun Wynn playing for BU this year, not one of Malcolm's kids is it?
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