Fall Classic

I'm a big fan of Halloween. It might even be my favorite holiday. But it's on the last day of October. Not much goes on during the rest of the month, especially now that Oktoberfest is increasingly inaccurately named.

However, there is at least one great thing about the first 30 days of October...postseason baseball. (Yes, this is a post about baseball. I probably just lost about 95% of my readers.) I love baseball. I'm actually typing this post while watching Game 1 of the World Series. That's one of the things I love about baseball--you can be doing two or three other things and still fully pay attention to a game on TV.

A lot of national writers and commentators aren't too thrilled with this year's WS match up, but I think the Rays and Phillies are both fun to watch, and once my team has been eliminated I enjoy seeing teams win that haven't won for a long time. So I think this will be a great series, a true Fall Classic.

I can easily trace the origins of my baseball fanhood. I got my first pack of baseball cards for my seventh birthday, a few weeks after the beginning of the 1987 season. I was instantly hooked on card collecting, and that 1987 Topps set is still far and away my favorite set of all time.

Like the station wagons of the era, the cards had fake wood paneling. There was a nice mix of action shots (like Barry Bonds) and youth soccer style poses (like Padres manager Steve Boros) on the card fronts. There were plenty of clean-cut guys, like Yankee pitcher (and Utah native) Scott Nielsen, but also lots of guys with cool mustaches: Keith Hernandez, Don Aase, Mark Clear, Carney Lansford, Dan Gladden, Steve Balboni...the list goes on and on.

I remember so much about that set. I remember that in the 792-card set, if a player's card number ended in a 5 or a 0, he was likely a good player; if it ended in 00, he was one of the best (or Dave Bergman). I remember who was on the all-star cards (Dave Parker, Teddy Higuera, Fernando, Tony Bernazard, etc.). I remember that year's record breakers (Roger Clemens' first 20-strikeout game, Dave Righetti's single season save record, Davey Lopes stealing more bases than any 40-year-old ever had, rookie Jim Deshaies striking out the first eight batters he faced in one start). I remember the "all star rookies" and "future stars" who panned out (Jose Canseco, B.J. Surhoff) and those who didn't (Andy Allanson, Tim Pyznarski). I remember the fun facts printed on the backs of the cards: "Mickey [Brantley] was a childhood chum of boxer Mike Tyson."

As my brother and I bought more and more wax packs, we built up our card "company" (all of our cards piled or stacked in a big bucket), which on a near-weekly basis I suggested we "split," just because I liked blindly pulling cards out of the middle of the pile and seeing who I ended up with. I began to learn what the statistics on the back of the card meant, and they fascinated me (although it took me a while to figure out there was no such thing as a "league leader in italics tie," but that might take me too long to explain). I saw that Yankee 1B Don Mattingly not only had the best stats, but shared my birthday, and he became my favorite player (I didn't realize at the time that the Yanks were the "evil empire" of baseball).

My brother also had a Street & Smith's magazine that recapped the memorable 1986 season that I loved looking at. For some reason, the first thing I think of when I recall that magazine is a weird quote from Royals utility infielder Greg Pryor about breakfast cereal.

I'm pretty sure that the first baseball game I ever watched was that year's all star game. I remember seeing Tim Raines hit the game-winning triple in the 13th inning to win the game for the National League, which is weird, because I was a little kid and that probably means I was up pretty late. Maybe I got some extra sugar from the cardboard gum that came in those packs of baseball cards. Coincidentally, I used a "Rock Raines" glove when I played t-ball and church softball. I believe it's the only mitt I've ever owned. (Even though I've loved baseball for a long time, I never actually played Little League.)

When the playoffs began that fall, I decided it was time to pick a favorite team. (My older brother had unfathomably become a Mariners fan. I have no idea why he chose them. They were even worse then than they are now.) Out of the four 1987 playoff teams (Cardinals, Giants, Tigers, Twins) I arbitrarily chose the Tigers. I'm not sure why, but it seems probable that my dad told me that their ace pitcher Jack Morris had attended BYU, which certainly would've swayed me towards Detroit. (My dad played baseball in high school and liked sports when I was a kid, but he hates them now for some reason.) My picking skills weren't great: the Tigers lost the ALCS to the Twins and didn't reach the postseason again until 2006, with some near-record futility in between.

Baseball evokes more nostalgia and has a much more fascinating history than any other sport, in my opinion, and now you know the history of my first year as a baseball fan. (By "you," I mean Chris James and my brother Adam, because I can't imagine anyone else would still be reading at this point. But maybe I know some closet baseball fans and don't realize it. If you're out there, let's watch Game 2 together.)