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Thirty years ago today my mom and dad loaded me into the back seat of our 1983 Chevrolet Celebrity and surprised me with a trip to SkyDome where I would watch the Blue Jays and Rangers, the first baseball game I ever attended, a crucially important moment in my life.
(No I didn& #39;t wear a suit and tie to the game, this is just a photo from around that same time)
I& #39;ll never forget that feeling the first time I saw the inside of the stadium slowly revealing itself -- first the seating, then the lights, the scoreboard, the field!
At 7:35 pm Mike Flanagan threw a called strike to Gary Pettis and that was it, baseball fan for life. The uniform matchup from that day.
The Jays won the game 7-1 with the help of homers from Fred McGriff, Pat Borders, and Kelly Gruber. I can remember someone in the section above us tossing confetti in the air after the final out. It& #39;s weird the things that stick with you.
(I still have the giant novelty finger that my dad bought me after the game somewhere in my collection, I& #39;ll post a pic if I find it, until then enjoy this...)
On the 20th anniversary of the game (April 12, 2010), we went back to the ballpark (this time I treated my dad), and we went back to our seats from my first game.
By wild coincidence, the first time I ever attended a game in a Major League pressbox was on the 25th anniversary of that first game sitting in the stands - on April 12, 2015 at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Bruce Froemming sat next to me, fell over in his chair at one point.
(Froemming also broke the & #39;e& #39; key on his laptop keyboard during the game and with not much else for me to do I ended up spending most of the night doing tech support for him)
Anyways, the whole point of this long thread is that I had tickets to take my 6-year-old son to see the Blue Jays face the Royals tonight, I was going to surprise him and drive down to the stadium, watch the game, then go find those same seats again and take a photo.
Of the list of things to be bummed about in the world right now, this is very far down. Still, I can be a little sad about us missing out on the moment.
We& #39;ll get another shot.
We& #39;ll get another shot.
