The brain holds what it wants to hold. Sometimes I even mutter to myself, please save this one. Does anyone else do that?
One of my earliest memories is of the old, cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium, aka “The Mistake on the Lake.”
The old stadium is a talisman of my life. Opened in 1931, it seated over 78,000, superseded only by the L.A. Coliseum. As I said, cavernous. The stadium was impossible to fill. (After demolition, the debris was placed in Lake Erie to create an artificial reef for fishermen and divers.) When I was 7-years-old, Ted Williams hit his 500th career home run at Municipal Stadium. When I was 10, an MLB record 84,587 people attended (a Yankees) game. When I was 13, the Beatles performed there. (I wasn’t allowed to go!) The first ever Monday Night Football game was played there when I was 17. Four-hundred Seventy feet from home plate to the bleachers in straightaway center field, no player ever hit a home run into the center field bleachers.
A favorite memory of mine was when my father drove up, as I stood across the street talking to a friend. My mother was next to him, my two brothers in the back.
“Climb in, we’re going to the game.”
I have always loved the spur-of-the-moment. And going to the game meant that my less-than-stable mother was doing well. We’d have fun. I’d take it. We sat in General Admission, with miles of empty chairs around us. Famed Baltimore Orioles pitcher, Jim Palmer, (the winningest MLB pitcher in the 1970s) was convinced that the pitcher’s mound at the stadium was taller than most: “The mound was, despite whatever the rules claim, just a little lower than Mount Kilimanjaro,” he joked.
When I was little, we usually sat in the bleachers. As I was chasing my brothers around and while trailing my hand along a worn wooden row, my 4-year-old palm filled with splinters.
Oh, the pain.
My folks were too engrossed in the game against the Yankees to take care.
“Throw it to Pepitone, he’ll muff it!” my mother shouted in glee to the centerfielder.
Even in my little girl’s eye, I could tell it was getting to him.
Years later, I would compete—passionately—with Mike and Matt as to who held the most Indian’s knowledge. Each of us had our outfielders’ mitts trained to catch a foul ball. In truth I was scared to death that one would come my way. I was always a clutz.
This summer I caught a ball! Well actually, it rolled to me. I gave it to the little boy behind me who worshipped Owen Miller, who had hit the ball. The little boy is probably too young to remember, but I hope his father does.
