Baseball trips are full of memories

Baseball is memory.

And those memories are tied forever with family.

Memories like:

•The first view of the green, green grass of a Major League Baseball field. For me, it was Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I was with my dad. Our seats weren’t great. But that didn’t matter. The grass was incredibly green, and I was with my dad.

•My last view of Crosley Field. My brother Steve and I had decided to make the trek for that final season. Our seats were good, but the night is most memorable for a promotion that went wrong. Numbered tennis balls were tossed into the stands for a giveaway, but a few innings later — after a botched call by an umpire — the tennis balls started raining down on the field. Play had to be stopped. But the grass was still as green as I remembered it.

•Stops at both Comiskey and Wrigley in Chicago in the early 1960s. My sister Linda was working at a camp west of Chicago, and Steve and his wife were in Evanston. None of the games were memorable, but the Cubs’ Ernie Banks was playing, which counts for something.

•A “twi-night” double header at Comiskey in about 1965 or 1966. I’d been conscripted to take some prize-winning newspaper carriers to Chicago. Though I was still in my teens, I was supposed to be the adult in charge. Somehow, I got us tickets for a two-game stint, though they might have been SRO, standing room only. The most memorable high point was watching a limping, aging, pained Mickey Mantle make his way around the bases. I don’t think he homered, but I do think he scored a run.

•Joining one of Connie’s old college friends and her husband in the nosebleed section of Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati in the 1970s. We were in a section high in right field, some of those seats that guaranteed we could not see the right fielder. And, lordy, that section was steep.

•Crashing the press box at a St. Louis game in 1988 with my buddy Tom Kelsey. We were both covering the Great American Race at the time. Our tickets were the cheapest we could find from street vendors, then we bluffed our way into the press box. Best seats in the house.

•A couple of games in San Francisco. Both came when I was serving as a judge for the California Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. The first time, I was on my own and was surrounded by Giants fans who made me feel as if I were part of the family. The second time, I was with family: Nephew Ron Butler and his wife Drea. With that view of the bay, you could not ask for a better ballpark.

•A couple of Sally’s birthday celebrations watching the Fort Wayne Wizards in the stadium that predates the Tincaps and Parkview Field. My uncle Jim Luginbill and old friend Bob Weinland accompanied us on one of those trips. They received miniature souvenir bats, which they then took back to Swiss Village and harassed the staff. On the other birthday trip, Sally ended up doing the chicken dance with the team mascot on top of the dugout. (Where was YouTube when we needed it?)

•A game with the Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Red Sox. We went with our daughter Emily, son-in-law Mike and grandson Julian. Mike had asked us to hold off on taking Julian to a professional baseball game. That’s something he wanted to preserve as an event that was strictly father-son. And we respected that.

•Last year at Wrigley. The Cubs are done this year. But last spring, I was able to take Connie to her first visit to Wrigley Field. The tickets cost a fortune, but they were worth it. The Cubs won, the flag went up.

And the grass? It was unbelievably green.