My intense interest in baseball began on an October day in 1951 when I wondered what all the male grownups I saw were so upset about. That was followed by six years of intense Brooklyn Dodger fandom.
My father took my brother and I to our first games at Ebbets Field on August 22, 1954 -- a disastrous 6-0, 6-2 double header sweep by the Phillies (Chris Short and Robin Roberts complete game wins). I remember some details of those games to this day. There were many subsequent trips to Ebbetts Field and a few Dodger-Giant games at the Polo Grounds.
Baseball was so simple then. Your team had only seven opponents and you played each one 22 times in a season. I knew the starting lineups and starting pitcher rotations for all seven opposing teams and saw each of them at least once. That means I saw Musial, Mays, Aaron, Clemente and every other NL Hall-of-Famer of that era.
I went through my Dark Ages from 1958 - 1961. My team abandoned me. I even went to some Yankee games to root for the visiting teams. I saw one of Roger Maris' 61 home runs in 1961.
I was an ardent Mets fan from their start in 1962. I always preferred radio to television. Bob Murphy's voice had more air time in my ears than my mother's. Since Murphy's death, the dominant voice in my home six months of each year was Howie Rose's. I didn't stay up for night games from the West Coast, but more often than not, for more than 50 years, the radio was on in my house for Mets games.
In recent years my interest has faded. Too many teams. Too many players. Too many relief pitchers used. Too many home runs. Too many strikeouts. Too many trades and free agent signings. I cannot even name one player on each of the teams any more with certainty.
The pandemic with its 60-game virtual 2020 season was the last straw. I paid no attention to it.
A couple of weeks ago there was a crossword puzzle clue for a four-letter answer: 2019 World Series winner for short. I couldn't remember it and had to look it up. Oh yeah. The Nats. The World Series in which the visiting team won all seven games. Pretty amazing.
Will I rekindle the flame when the pandemic ends? I don't think so. I've gone cold turkey. I don't even look at the sports section now and never listen to sports talk radio. With no intake of information, baseball (and NBA hoops too) has left my world. But any time I want to I can close my eyes and see Carl Furillo take a ball out of the air with his right hand after it bounced high off the weird concave right field wall in Ebbets Field and fire a one-hop strike into Campanella's mitt to nail a runner -- out at the plate!!!
