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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't wear a suit and tie to the game, this is just a photo from around that same time)
I'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'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'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 'e' 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'll get another shot.
We'll get another shot.
