With the Philadelphia Phillies’ 2016 opener having been played on April 4, welcome back to the second and final column on Baseball Memories.
One of the many positives in moving to the new Veterans’ Stadium in 1971, from the elderly Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium, was you didn’t have to worry about your vision of the playing field being obstructed by one of the many steel supports, as it was in the earlier stadium, built in 1909. Also, the capacity was increased from around 33,000 to 62,000. The new stadium had some minuses, though: the entire field was Astroturf, eliminating the cocoa effect with the dirt no longer in the infield, as well as being harder on the players’ bodies from playing on the harder, hotter field.
Barb and I attended the first game at Veterans Stadium. The park was sold out and we sat under the Sunoco sign in deep center field; but who cares, we were at the inaugural game! We shivered in the cold, windy spring day and left before the game was over to quickly get to our car. But our problems were just starting as we left the stadium. We arrived rather late for the game, found a parking place in the lot quite a distance from the field and ran to the entrance gate. Oh boy! We forgot to make a mental note of where we had parked. We had to wait until much of the lot was empty until we found our car. Just remember, memories are made of good times and bad ones too.
In celebrating the bicentennial, the 1976 All-Star game was played in Philadelphia. A high school friend of mine and I purchased 17 game ticket plans because we would be able to also purchase tickets to the All-Star game. As an added bonus, the Phillies won the Eastern Division Title that year so we were able to purchase tickets to the National League Playoffs.
Unfortunately, I was a member of our firm’s Catastrophe Team that took control of any facility that had a major loss (flood, fire, hurricane, etc.) and about an hour before I was to leave for the playoff game with the Dodgers, on a Saturday, my boss called to advise me our store in Gettysburg was flooded. Barb had to drive me to my boss’s house, where we were to leave for Gettysburg. Fortunately, Barb was brazen enough to advise my boss of how much I had planned to go to the playoff game, and he was impressed enough by her statements that he made sure we did all we could to organize the employees and leave written instructions of all duties to be accomplished so we were able to return in time the next day to see the next playoff game (since I was able to trade tickets for Sunday’s game with a friend).
In 1979, when our oldest son, Greg, was four, I took him to his first professional baseball game. We only made it through six innings but we still got our money’s worth. The total cost of tickets was around ten dollars. We took all our food and drinks with us. All younger kids received a Phillies T-shirt that would have cost about four of five dollars. Of course, I was disappointed when Greg had to go to the men’s room, but my disappointment faded quickly when we found a bundle of one dollar bills as we left the men’s room.
Something that is really rewarding is when you take your child to Phillies games over the years and there comes a time when the outing is reciprocated. Greg was in college and he told me he was taking me to the game. He bought the tickets and we ended up in seats where the sun was blaring down on us. We both wore shorts to the game and neither of our bodies was much into tanning. Early in the game, I looked down and saw my thighs were turning red. We quickly solved the problem by finishing the hoagies we brought to the park and spreading the paper that wrapped the hoagies across our legs. We had a solution for everything. Two elderly ladies sat next to us and were ready to eat their lunch when they ran into a problem. They were unable to open their plastic condiment packets. Now, you have to remember this was in the mid-1990s when the whole world was safe. Greg pulled out his Swiss Army knife, unfolded a tiny pair of scissors from it and opened the packets for the ladies. One thing I found out about Greg: when he came to the assistance of elderly ladies, he could do no wrong in their eyes. We enjoyed the rest of the game with those ladies.
The last story is one of my favorites. One great thing about baseball is that someone in their early teens can be just as right in his opinion as the adult man sitting next to him at a game. I was a great Tony Gonzales fan. Tony played 12 years in the majors with his best years with the Phils from 1960 to 1968. He was a good center fielder and had a very respectable career batting average of .286. Tony was on second base in a game at Connie Mack Stadium when I said to the man next to me what a good player Tony was. I was told he was nothing but a lazy bum. The next pitch was hit toward the 447 foot sign in dead center. Tony tagged up on the caught fly ball and took off – not just to third, but scored sliding in safely at home plate. I just sat there with a big smile on my face and then let the fan next to me know who the real knowledgeable baseball fan was.
So ends some of my memories about the game of baseball. I think I’ll take my high school baseball glove to bed with me tonight. Just maybe I will dream of some of my best fielding plays while playing for my high school team!
Jeff Hall, of Honey Brook, contributes columns to Berks-Mont Newspapers. Questions/comments may be directed to jeffreyhall77@comcast.net.
