![]() ![]() I come by it honestly, being raised to love baseball. It took a straight trajectory to left-center field finally coming to rest in the grass just to the left of the fountains. Not only did the ball rise skyward as if shot from a cannon, it appeared as if it would never come down. Being so close, I heard the deafening crack of the bat at the same time I saw the contact. The ball left the pitcher’s hand and floated toward home plate as if in a vacuum. I could see his chest deflate and then inflate as he raised his bat. He stepped into the box and planted himself like a statue. He approached the batter’s box in a glide, he didn’t even walk like a regular human being.įirst, he pawed at the dirt with his left foot, stepped back and did the same with his right, stepped back again and beat the dirt from his cleats with the butt of his bat. Bo Jackson was a physical freak of nature. When Number 16 came to the plate for the first time I could not resist being excited. A Cardinals fan, I politely cheered for them based upon our shared Missourianhood. I don’t remember the score, but I do remember the Royals won that day. When I did finally speak, I told my dad, “Mom can probably see us on TV from here!” When the usher finally led us down to our seats I could do nothing but look around, mouth agape, in absolute wonderment. We were in the second row of seats right behind home plate, in Kaufman Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri. I’d attended quite a few pro baseball games with my dad, most of them at Busch Stadium, but we had never sat in seats like this. I was either ten or eleven years old that summer, exactly what day, I can’t quite remember, but what happened, I will never forget. To me it would never have mattered who was playing, or where the game was being played, if the game was baseball, and my Pop was the one taking me. I did and still do bleed Cardinal red, but my dad was given tickets to a Royals game and invited me to go with him. The air was thick with the smells of smoked meats, roasted peanuts, spilled beer, and freshly raked dirt.
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