I have the same baseball memories everyone else does. First game with my dad, nachos, Coke, but never cotton candy. My dad told me where to play second base by saying, "Just go where Frank White stands."
I remember I hit a (very) rare home run in Little League with a girl I was trying to go out with watching from the metal bleachers. I kissed her in a movie theater that next weekend.
The house I grew up in had a terrible backyard, and by terrible I mean it was beautiful and full of green grass with a nice patio but laid out in a way that just made it almost impossible to get a good game of Home Run Derby. The neighbor's house was a home run, at least it was until one of us broke a window and we all had to chip in to replace it.
But my strongest baseball memory didn't happen in my back yard or some Little League field or Kauffman Stadium or even in that movie theater.
My strongest memory came in Skokie, Ill., in my grandparents' living room. Grandma had three hip replacements, walked with a cane ever since I could remember, and was, outside of my parents, the most influential person of my childhood.
She was a retired English teacher with immaculate handwriting, whose cupboards always had Fig Newtons, whose letters always encouraged school first, and whose passion was always tied in an important way to baseball.
Apparently, Grandma used to be an opera buff. I used to play with her opera glasses, which I alternately thought were really cool and really funny looking. I'm not sure if she just got sick of the opera, or thought it got too expensive, or maybe thought the hassle of getting to the theater and back was too much.
Whatever, Grandma transferred that passion to baseball, and to the Cubs in particular. She knew everyone's batting averages, everyone's tendencies, and I'm not sure she ever really forgave Leon Durham for letting that ball get past him in the '84 NLCS.
She loved the Cubs, and watched them almost everyday on WGN, even though she hated Harry Caray. These were the days before remote controls, or at least before my grandparents had a remote, and I can still see her scooting all the way across the room to turn the volume off whenever those Harry Caray Bud Man, Cub Fan commercials came on.
We went to a half-dozen or so games at Royals Stadium every summer, and Fred and Denny were on in the house every night, so I'm sure I was destined one way or the other to be a baseball fan, but I've long thought that a big reason for it is I always wanted that connection with my Grandma, always wanted to find ways to be like her.
I suspect she would've griped over the '94 strike and sworn the game off, only to come back to it after a few years, just like I did. I suspect she'd be simultaneously hopeful and skeptical about the Royals in the long term, and nervous about the Cubs in the short term.
Those thoughts always make me smile. They're a small reason I love baseball, and here is the part where I turn the keyboard over to some of the nearly 50 of you who, no doubt encouraged by the $0 prize money, wrote in to say why you still love it, too, even in the midst of another last-place Royals season.
Before we get to the winner, I'd like to share some excerpts that made me smile:
* "Because even after my Steelers won their first Super Bowl in my lifetime, my favorite Steeler (Bettis) played his last game and finally got his ring, five minutes after the game ended, I thought, 'Only two months until Opening Day.'" -- Gordon Marx.
* "Sept. 5, 1995 was my first Royals game. Bob Hamelin hit a walk-off shot in the 10th to win it. I remember Wally Joyner and Joe Carter going deep in that game as well. The Royals had a big comeback victory that night. I was 9, yet I still remember getting hooked when Mark Gubicza and Jon Nunnally chatted with me while signing my baseball in the parking lot after the game." -- Levi Payton
* "In a few years (I believe), the Royals are going to be a playoff contender. I always want to tune in to see what player wants to be here when it happens." -- Trent Rose
* "It's human nature to act like a kid now and then. It's healthy. Watching this team makes me feel like a young kid who just wanted to play baseball. The Royals have allowed me to be a kid when I've needed it." -- Justin Gesling
* "Ever had that experience of awe when you first see the field? I walked through the little concrete hole and saw that bright green field...it was captivating, exhilirating, breathtaking. How can you not fall in love with that?" -- Jonathan Tucker
* "I am still watching because I bet a friend they would lose 92 games this year." -- Paul Wendel
* "With all the stress in today's world, I'm probably more relaxed watching a game at Kauffman with an adult beverage than pretty much any place else...I smile every time I enter Kauffman. I remember the past with my Dad, and enjoy the present with my boys." -- Greg Smith
* "When playing little league (5 years old) my dad told me to play center field. I had no clue where that was. He then put it into terms I could understand: 'Go to where Willie Wilson plays.'" -- No. 13 on Michael Manion's top 20 reasons he still cares.
Here's the runner-up, from Bill:
"I love it because I grew up playing it. It is elegant in its simplicity and its complexity and its history.
"And I love it because of Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe Garagiola, Ted Williams, Joe Dimaggio, Ken and Clete Boyer, the Gashouse Gang, the Yankees, the Kansas City Athletis, Jerry Lumpe, Lou Piniella, George Brett, the World Series, Hal McRae, Frank White, Freddie Patek, Dick Howser, the '85 Royals, Willie Aikens, Willie Mays, Paul Splittorff, Yogi Berra, Dan Quisenberry, Bill Mazeroski and his home run and a hundred other players and events over the years.
"I love it because of teams like the Rockies last year, and the Rockies and the Rays this year, who keep on keepin' on without the big bucks, and I continue to love it and care about the Royals because they are ours and Joe McGuff, among others, fought hard to get them here. I continue to care because Dayton Moore might yet pull it off, and because for now, there is still hope, however slight, that next year we may no longer have to deal with Jose Guillen or Trey Hillman."
And here's the winner, from Tom Barkwell, who gets points not just for a story I think we can all relate to, but also for sending it in from Madagascar, where he works at the American Embassy:
"I first fell in love with big league baseball in 1967, at age seven. An uncle gave my twelve year old brother and me two dollars and some bus tokens and sent us off to a Sunday afternoon A's game at old Municipal Stadium. Bleacher seats were fifty cents back then, and frosty malts were thirty five.
"There was livestock just beyond the outfield fences, Charlie O' the Mule, a mechanical bunny rabbit at home plate delivering baseballs to the umpire, kelly green and gold uniforms, vendors with booming voices selling a tempting array of goodies, fielders making incredible catches and throws, and loud cracks off the bats of the hitters. Even the grounds crew was fascinating to watch. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Of course I decided right then and there I was going to be a professional baseball player when I grew up.
"Little did I know that, much like a fickle little brown eyed girl would do later that same year, the A's were about to break my heart. How could they abandon us like that? The name Charlie Finley would soon become synonymous with Benedict Arnold in our family.
"But the pain was short lived, and soon replaced with the incomparable joy of a new love. A brand spanking new expansion team of our very own. The paper had a contest to pick the name for our new club. I wanted the Cougars, but the Royals were a good choice, too.
"I became the most baseball obsessed little kid you have ever seen. I could recite all the Royals statistics, and would play endless hours of baseball, day after summer day on our local playground at Redemptorist Church -- pick-up games, Indian ball, burnout, hotbox, pepper -- using an old kelly green bat held together by nails and tape, lopsided baseballs, and gloves rigged with shoestrings.
"I loved the Royals from the beginning. Like today's squad, they weren't very good at first. But that didn't prevent us from pretending to be such immortals as Dennis Paepke or Ed Kirkpatrick when catching, Jackie Hernandez at shortstop, or Pat Kelly in the outfield. We didn't care that they weren't exactly the Big Red Machine - they were our guys, and I just knew they were going to rip off a huge winning streak any day now, and take the pennant by storm. And if not this season, there was absolutely no doubt it would happen next year.
"I guess I still have a lot of that little kid left in me. I seem to always believe that the Royals are about to break out and contend, even when they're twelve games back. Against all reason and logic, I'm convinced that a return to the glory days of the 70's and 80's is imminent.
"I love the Royals - win or lose. And I hope I always will. You see, it's not about the destination anyway. It's about the experiences along the journey."
It's all about the memories of watching the game as you walk up the stairs and reach the top deck, to be greeted with the look of the field, it's magical. It doesn't matter whether the game is played on natural grass or synthetic grass, it's still always a great experience, as good as the first time I ever went to watch a game.