An affair of the heart
A Valentine's Day love story
With Valentine’s Day coinciding with the day most major league teams’ pitchers and catchers take to the field for the first time this spring, I have love on my mind.
Specifically, my life-long love affair with baseball.
Someone recently asked me about the origin of my passion for the game, and it got me thinking: Why do I love Baseball?
For me, like a 40-year-year-old television rerun that makes me laugh no matter how often I’ve seen it, I think it’s because it takes me straight back to my childhood. And that brings me a unique sense of comfort.
You know the final scene of Field of Dreams? That’s me.
I love baseball because baseball takes me back to playing catch with my Dad.
When I started playing ball as an elementary schooler in the mid 1970s, my Dad still had his early-1950s Marty Marion-model glove. He’d gotten it when he was in 6th or 7th grade.
It was like a pillow. A rich chocolaty brown. It was the kind of glove you’d expect to see protected in a glass case in Cooperstown, maybe situated between a Joe DiMaggio bat and a telegram from Branch Rickey to Jackie Robinson. And it emitted a distinctive “thump” when a baseball nestled inside the small but heavily padded palm and was enveloped by the stubby fingers.
That glove hadn’t gotten much use between his teen years and fatherhood, so it still has some mileage left on it. And I don’t remember thinking much about the difference between the glove he wore and my first glove, a Willie Mays-signed MacGregor model.
But we played a lot of catch. And he threw a lot of batting practice to my younger brother and me in the cage at Suniland Park or on the fields at Coral Reef. And over the span of a few years, he had to restring it several times as it began to finally show its age.
I was 10 when he turned 40. And for his milestone birthday, my Mom decided it was time that Dad got an upgrade.
We bought him a Wilson A2000.
To this day, many regard the A2000 as the gold standard of baseball gloves. It’s worn all over Major League Baseball.
At that time, you couldn’t just walk into a sporting goods store and pull an A2000 off a fancy display. It had to be special ordered. After a few weeks, the call came. Dad’s birthday present had arrived at the store through which we’d made the purchase.
So on that late May day in 1979, I’m sure with some degree of pomp and circumstance, the Marty Marion model was relegated to the dustbin of history.
Thank you for your distinguished service.
It wasn’t thrown out. In our family then (and my family now) nothing gets thrown out. But it was probably stuck in a closet somewhere and eventually covered by a pile of sweaters. Come to think of it, that’s the same fate met by my current A2000 with my own kids long ago retired from the game.
The look and feel and smell of Dad’s new glove was different. But once he got it broken in, it worked just as well if not better. And we continued to play a lot of catch and take a lot of BP.
My Dad usually managed or coached the youth league teams on which my brother and I played. Mom was almost always the Team Mom. Before he started playing himself (quite well, I might add), my younger brother was the batboy. In our house, like everything else, baseball was a family affair.
That’s why I love baseball.
The start of each new season meant shopping for new batting gloves and cleats. We’d load up on Gatorade Gum, and we were ready to go.
Baseball season meant piling into the car for practice with our gear, the dusty clay-covered bag that held the team’s selection of Easton bats, the batting helmets, catchers equipment and the bases we’d plop down for practice. And there was the giant bucket of balls.
Baseball season meant hanging out with your buddies, most of whom were exponentially better than I was at playing the game. A handful even went on to play college or pro ball. One of my old teammates, Brad Woodall, reached the big leagues. How cool was it for me to broadcast a few of his games? How cool was it for him to pitch for a bit on a big league staff that included Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine. That’s a long way from Suniland Park.
Baseball meant grabbing a Cherry Sprite at the Suniland concession stand. That seemed like such a novel concept at the time. You could ask the person working the stand to pump a few squirts of the cherry snow cone juice into a styrofoam cup of Sprite.
Baseball even had a taste.
I think the statute of limitations has passed, so I can share this little-known fact: Your Cherry Sprite was often free when your teammate’s older sister was working the stand. She would, however, always make you pay for a slice of pizza or a Milky Way.
Over the years, I only played on one championship team, the 1980 Expos, and that season produced my single greatest moment as a baseball player.
It came in the bottom of the 7th and final inning of the playoff championship game. In a 3-3 tie, I led off with a single. At that moment that was one of my greatest moments as a baseball player. But it would soon be surpassed. I stole second. (Everybody stole second when you were 11.) I advanced to third on a ground ball to the right side. Then, as I led from third representing the championship-winning run, a pitch sailed high and outside and looked like it might go to the backstop. As I took a step or 2 toward the plate, sensing a chance to score, the catcher sprang out of his crouch and made the catch with full extension. He quickly looked my way, spied me caught in no-man’s land and fired a laser to third base.
Oh, crap!
Having no idea what I was doing, but realizing that trying to beat the throw back to third probably wasn’t the best course of action, I broke for the plate. Like Enos Slaughter, making his mad dash in the 1946 World Series, somehow I beat the throw.
I’d like to tell you I barreled over the catcher, jarring the ball loose, then stood above him and raised my arms in triumph, maybe even shouting something dramatic in Latin. But that may not be exactly how it played out.
Regardless, I scored. The Expos were champions, and I was carried off the field by my teammates. I felt like Rudy before anybody knew who Rudy was.
My playing career would largely be downhill from there.
But I sure did love baseball.
On that night and so many others, a bunch of us would go out to eat after games, still in full uniform. Cleats scraping against the asphalt in the parking lot of some restaurant on South Dixie Highway.
Then I’d go home to my baseball card collection, painstakingly gathered by opening one wax pack after another and peeling away the rock-hard rectangle of that disgustingly delicious gum.
Thankfully, I grew up before people started buying full boxed sets. Otherwise I never would have had 6 1979 Rob Picciolo cards, and I wouldn’t have had the thrill of the hunt, trying find my personal favorite, Graig Nettles.
Rob Picciolo always fascinated me as a kid because I never had a clue how to pronounce his last name. I remember wondering if even he knew how to pronounce it.
When I got my first major league job with the Padres in 1997, “Peach” was our bench coach. One of the kindest and most decent men I’ve ever known.
Peach passed away far too young, but I’ll never forget that baseball card coming to life and how much it meant to get to know the man.
That’s why I love baseball.
As for that elusive Nettles card, the Yankees third baseman was an absolute magician with the glove and a former AL home run champ. He was my guy.
We’d go to Spring Training games in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Years before Miami had its own major league team, we had Canes games at Mark Light Field, and we had Spring Training every February and March. I practically lived at the Light, not too far from our South Dade home. And we’d make a few trips a year to old Miami Stadium and old Fort Lauderdale Stadium to see the Orioles, Yankees and whoever made the Grapefruit League bus ride south to play them.
It was a big deal for a 9-year-old to see the Yankees open up Spring Training against the Dodgers on a frigid Fort Lauderdale night in 1978 only months after those same 2 teams had played in the World Series and only months before they’d play in another Fall Classic.
I remember looking at the program that night and wondering what it meant that pitcher Ken Clay was a “non-roster invitee.” Did they find this guy long tossing at a park on Commercial Blvd. and hand him a uniform?
Oh yeah, long tossing. One night we were warming up for a game under the lights at Suniland. Night games were the coolest. They made you feel like you were a big leaguer even though you knew you had school in the morning. In the distance, far from the 12-year-old Twins and Mariners getting ready for a game (I was a Twin that year), 2 guys were long tossing. Well, one guy was long tossing, firing effortless shoulder-high rockets on a line 300 or 350 feet. The other guy would catch the throws then dutifully return the ball on approximately 7 bounces.
The guy with the cannon? Someone recognized him as young Montreal Expo and native Miamian Andre Dawson. He was getting ready for Spring Training. I was playing catch that night too. Only one of us has a plaque at the Hall of Fame.
I told you Graig Nettles was my guy before I got a little sidetracked again.
Baseball gets you sidetracked. Another reason why I love it.
Why was Nettles my guy?
Miami Stadium. Spring Training, 1978. I was standing against the railing on the home plate side of the first base dugout watching the Yankees take batting practice before a game against the Orioles. Nettles walked over and handed me a bat.
That bat is about 5 feet to my left as I retell this story 46 years later.
It dawned on me some years ago how that simple act may have changed the course of my life. It tangibly connected me to baseball in a way that impacts me to this day.
Years later, when I was working in San Diego and Nettles was in town scouting for the Yankees, I introduced myself and was able to tell him that story. I actually worked with his daughter for several years with the Padres. Baseball is a small world.
That’s why I love baseball.
As a kid, baseball was hearing Mel Allen’s “How about that?” on This Week in Baseball every Saturday at 12:30 before Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek provided the soundtrack to NBC’s Game of the Week at 1. At a time before ESPN, and decades before having access to every game on your iPhone, the Saturday afternoon Game of the Week was can’t-miss. The best match-up of every weekend would air on national TV. One week it may have been the Red Sox and Yankees from Fenway. The next, maybe the Dodgers and Phillies at the Vet. You’d get that game on Saturday and then Monday Night Baseball on ABC with voices like Howard Cosell and Keith Jackson in their spiffy yellow blazers.
On Tuesday nights, since we didn’t have our own team in Miami, Channel 6 would carry Yankees games, airing the local New York telecast.
WIOD in Miami would air every Yankees radio broadcast in those years. I’d lie in bed long after lights out listening to Phil Rizzuto, Bill White and Frank Messer as they painted a colorful picture. Years later, I’d call games from many of the same ballparks, at least those that remained, and presumably from many of the same booths.
That’s why I love baseball.
I’ve been fortunate. I turned my love of baseball into a pretty good career. 31 years in the game so far, 5 in Triple-A and 26 in the big leagues with the Padres, Red Sox and Marlins.
People I meet sometimes ask what it was like talking hitting with Tony Gwynn or having a front-row seat when Papi, Pedro and the 2004 Red Sox snapped the Curse of the Bambino.
There’ve been countless memorable moments and remarkable relationships formed along the way.
But when I ask myself why I love baseball, the answer has nothing to do with World Series rings and Hall of Famers.
Through all the twists and turns of life, I’ve had one straight line that connects the decades. From playing catch with my Dad to doing so with my own children. From growing up listening to the Scooter call Yankees games on the radio to now having college students and young adults tell me they grew up listening to me.
That one straight line bridges my life.
That’s why I love baseball.
While you’re here…
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Learn more about one-on-one play-by-play coaching from Glenn Geffner via Zoom at glenngeffner.com.
This is beautiful. Thank you for telling such a great story Geff.
Wonderful article. The baseball thread runs through many of our lives, tying the segnenrs together and always generating our stories. What's not to love? Thank you.