Those upper deck packages do sound like a reasonable deal, but going to a game is more expensive than it used to be.

“My first experience of Major League baseball–or at least the first I remember–came when I was five years old. My grandparents had come to visit on their annual summer trip, and one night my father suggested we go to a game. For some reason my mother and grandmother decided to stay behind, but my grandfather, dad, and I took off for Yankee Stadium. We lived not far from the George Washington Bridge on the Jersey side, so going to a game was an easy thing.
We went up to the ticket window and my father, perhaps hoping to impress his father-in-law, asked for the best seats they could give us. We were seated behind home plate, maybe twenty rows back, behind the protective screen. These were probably team tickets that no one claimed–players’ wives seats or something. I was so small that most of what I saw of the game was the shoulders of the adults around me, but that didn’t really detract from my experience. The noise, the excitement, the lights, the cheering–much more exciting than the circus or some “kiddie” entertainment.
I remember only one detail from that game. At one point Bobby Murcer came to the plate with the bases loaded. I felt all the adults around me suddenly focus their attention–for a child like me it was akin to those mysterious moments in church when all the people seemed to know when to get ready to sing. Something was about to happen. Shortly thereafter, everyone began jumping up and down and screaming. Murcer had hit a home run, and my dad then taught me the words “grand slam.” From that moment, I was hooked.”

What’s kind of cool is that many years later I got to tell that story to Bobby Murcer, when he was working for the Yankees as a broadcaster and I was in the spring training press box while working for Gotham Baseball. He was very gracious to listen to me. And I’m so blessed to have gotten the chance to tell him about it before he was taken from us a year or two later.

I like John and Suzyn. John’s getting old and isn’t as sharp as he once was, but he has Suzyn to make up for that. :-)

You would have been pretty young, but did you ever make it to the old old Yankee stadium, before the rebuilt it?