The Absent Uncle: My first baseball game

Invariably at the start of the baseball season I always remember my first major league baseball game.

Over the years I have been very fortunate to have attended many games in quite a few stadiums throughout the country. But none of these games come so clearly into my thoughts as that first one.

The Washington Senators moved to the Minnesota Twin Cities and became the Twins for the 1961 baseball season. I became an instant fan of baseball and listened to the broadcast games on radio pretty regularly.

Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington was 150-plus miles from our home farm outside of Marshall, and as a family, we rarely traveled to the Twin Cities area. 

Finally, in the summer of 1963, an appointment for my dad necessitated a trip to “the Cities”. The appointment was made and much to my delight the Twins were playing at home in a series with the Boston Red Sox and on the day of the appointment they were playing a twi-night double header!

Coming from a farm family that did little travel, plans were made to make the two-and-a half-hour drive in time for the early afternoon appointment, a trip to a mall for some shopping, and then to the ballpark. Eighteen innings of baseball heaven.

And we were indeed near to heaven as the cheapest seats were on the third deck and we were about halfway back in the seats we had bought. Hardly no one was up there, but we wouldn’t move closer because we didn’t want to get in trouble by not sitting in “our” seats.

I put my baseball mitt on with the first batter to ensure I could catch a foul ball hit our way. It never came off, and no ball ever made it up to the third deck. (Come to think of it, I have never had a foul ball ever come close to me in any game!) The Twins won the first game and lost the second. Both games were high scoring and neither of the Twins pitchers were the frontline starters.

I didn’t get a hotdog or any other concession item – mom had made sandwiches and brought a thermos of some kind of soft drink for us to share. It was the old days, and you could bring that type of thing into a stadium.  

We stayed through the entire second game and then made the two-and-a half-hour drive home. Being a youngster, I had the entire backseat to myself and slept, leaving my mom and dad to keep each other awake on the drive. 

As beautiful as today’s stadiums are; I will never forget how green the outfield grass was, and how manicured the infield looked at the start of the game under the lights. Just glorious to this farm boy.