Baseball time!

When I was a kid, Cable TV was in it's infancy in Lafayette.  There were no "converter boxes"....TV's had 12 channels, so.....you guessed it...the most channels we could get was 12!!  Sure, we could get baseball on the weekends, and occasionally in prime time at night.  Sure, we could root for any team we wanted, and our parents would encourage our choice.  It was infinitely better, though, to root for a team we could see on TV .

 Thank goodness Lafayette cable carried WGN, (Channel 9) from Chicago, and with it, darned near every Chicago Cubs game! Blame it all on local TV, but my brother Craig and I were die hard Cubbies fans as kids.  We watched and absorbed every precious second our Mom would let us watch of Cubs TV from the "Leadoff Man" show to the post game show. We listened to all of announcer Jack Brickhouse's banter and play-by-play. We sat, transfixed, as close to the TV screen as our Mom would allow, and imagined we were actually at the ballpark ourselves.

 Money was tight, but our parents saved all year long each year trying to put together a summer vacation.   So, in the very early 70's, one year it came to pass that our Dad had actually sent away for baseball tickets!!  Our vacation was going to be at a real major league baseball game!!  We were going to be in the same ballpark with real pro baseball players!!  Maybe we could meet some!  Maybe we could get some autographs!! Dad explaining how to keep a box score, or the career of the current batter.  Hotdogs and plastic batting helmet souvenirs.  Wow, there could never be a better vacation in all the world!!

I am a Grandpa now, and I must confess, I have long forgotten the score of the game, or which players we saw, or most of the specifics.  There were several similar trips over the next few years for our little family, to several ballbarks, and the actual games bleed together in one big mishmash in that addled area I call my brain.  My favorite baseball memory, then, is not about one incident, or one day.  It is of our little family, going to Riverfront Stadium to see the Reds, or Wrigley to see the Cubbies, or wherever.  Total bliss for a couple chubby kids from Lafayette. What more could you want?