BASEBALL OVER THE YEARS

   I will be providing remarks about pictures presented here, as well as the influence baseball has been to me. I would have to initially state that my uncle Bernie was the primary reason in my starting to follow baseball and the Yankees, in particular. Bernie returned from the 2nd World War in late 1945. He began to work for his father's (my mother's father too) Wholesale business soon after that. Since we lived above the store, I would see him every weekday and 1/2 a day on Saturday. We picked orders, but mostly delivered them together. During baseball season - roughly April to October - we would always listen to Yankee games on the car radio.
   I even began doing box scores when listening at home to games. And, on several occasions my uncle and I went to games at Yankee Stadium. When I was older, I went to games at Yankee Stadium with friends. Personal cameras with some semblance of quality were not really available till I was about 20 years old. So I probably do not have any photos from my early visits to any ballpark. I may be able to find some in my completing scanning old photos - although unlikely.
   The first baseball photos that I currently have happen to be from an infamous game known as the Pine Tar Incident. The photos below are after a home run was hit with a runner on base and it was nullified as the Yankee manager showed the umpires that the home run hitter's (George Brett of Kansas City) bat had excessive pine tar. The ruling was subsequently overturned and the game completed 25 days later with Kansas City winning 5-4.  The last photo is me in a shirt that Brett got me.

7/24/1983 - Pine Tar Incident

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1-Bob,Brett

2-Steven,Brett

3-YankeeStadium

4-Zaidie

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    This is a ticket from a game attended in 1984.  It was a 6-5 walk-off victory for the Yankees.

      

   Over the years, Brett, Joey and I travelled to see baseball games (as baseball fans) in all of the major league stadiums (well, Joey missed a few, and about 10 new stadiums have been built that we haven’t yet visited) . It started kind of innocently on a trip to Maine in 1988 to a sailing ship cruise. Louise got us tickets for a game at Fenway Park in Boston on our way driving up to Maine. It was a very hot summer and I remember sitting in the sun on the 3rd base side and sweltering, watching a long Red Sox - Tigers high scoring game. Detroit - in 1st place at the time - took the lead 4-3 in the top of the sixth.  But the Red Sox answered with 13 runs in the 6th to 8th innings.  We anxiously awaited the shade that was coming our way in the later innings.
   I had a itinararies of all the games that we went to over the years, but I had a hard drive crash and lost them all.  The only itinerary sheet that documented the games is included with the games in 1990 below.  Brett and Joey said that they had some details that they may get to me.  A lot of the pics, and all of the tickets are from what Brett had saved.  Some of the games were part of a larger trip.  As such, they Have been posted in my regular Photo pages.  These are added to in what follows with tickets and/or other baseball memorabilia.

8/13/1988 - Fenway Park

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0	1	2	3	4
5

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1989 - August Trip

    As with the photos from the 1988 trip, these are mostly pics of the parks themselves.  At the time, such pics were not that commonly available.  But with the advent in the 1990s of the Internet, such pics became much more common.  Later on, more pictures of us with stadiums in the background are used.
   When I accidentally went the wrong way in the parking lot in Toronto, we ran into Mookie Wilson (who we knew from his time in NY with the Mets) - see pic 57.  Noteworthy, too, was the Yankee-Detroit Old Timer's Day in Detroit.  Also. some side trips were to see family, a museum (and Le Peep) in Milwaukee, Detroit's Renaissance Center and  Wally World.  Wally World in London, Ontario, Canada was a water park (with warm tubs and batting cages, plus).  And we also made a brief, but interesting, visit to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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0	01-ThrreRiversStadium	02	03	04
05-MunicipalStadium	06	07-WrigleyField	08-Brett	09-Brett,Bob
10	11	12-Jen	13-Brett,Jen,Deb	14-HHHMetrodome
15	16	17	18-LakeMichigan	19
20-Brett	21	22	23	24
25-Brett,Joey	26-Comiskey	27-Joey,Jeffrey,Brett	28-Jeffrey,Joey,Brett,Bob	29
30	31	32-LakeMichigan	33-Joey,Bob,Brett	34-Brett
35-Joey	36-Joey,Brett	37-NorrisAquaticCenter	38	39-Brett,Joey
40-Bob	41-Brett,Joey	42	43	44
45	46	47	48-Joey,Brett	49-Brett,Bob
50-Brett	51-Brett,Bob	52-Bob,Joey,Brett	53-Brett	54-Joey
55	56	57-Joey,Mookie,Brett	58	59-Joey,Bob,Brett

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1990 - August Trip

    Before each baseball trip that we took I used to prepare an itinerary.  I would list hotel costs on my copy, but not on copies for Brett and Joey.  I lost my computer copies when I had computer trouble many years ago.  So far the only copy available (from Brett) is the first pic here.  We followed the itineraries very closely.  With tickets that Brett had saved, these are pretty good proof of games that we saw.  If these 2 pics are compared it can be seen that Riverfront Stadium and Atlanta County Fulton Stadium tickets are missing.
   Noteworthy in the baseball venues:  It was very hot for the game in Arlington (97 F at game time) so we stayed a little cool by going to a waterpark before the game and coming over in our bathing suits.  It was hotalso in Houston, but very humid too.  We got to the Astrodome before the gates opened and tried to be cooler by standing in a sliver of shade.  And in Baltimore we did meet and get the Yankee Manager, Stump Merrill's autograph (see pic 33).
   For side trips:  We saw the St. Louis Arch.  We saw relatives who grilled us a meal and rushed us to Royal Stadium in Kansas City.  We drove through Oklahoma and I even swam in a very hot lake.  We went to Galveston where it was 100 F and 100% humidity.  It was so hot that Brett and Joey wouldn't get out of the car at the 1877 Tall Ship Elissa.  We took a ferry, and visited New Orleans.  We used water skis in the Gulf of Mexico and went on the beach in Pensacola, Florida.   

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0-Itinerary	0-Tickets	01-ThreeRiversStadium	02	03-Joey,Brett	04-TheArch
05-Brett,Joey	06-BuschMemorialStadium	07	09-Joey,Brett	09-Muriel&Jack	10-Joey,Muriel,Jack,Brett
11-Joey,Brett	12-Bob	13-RoyalsStadium	14-ArlingtonStadium	15	16
17-Astrodome	18-joey,Bob,Brett	19	20-joey,Bob,Brett	21-Bob	22
23	24-Brett-Ferry	25-Joey,Brett	26-Brett,Joey	27-AtlantaCountyFultonStadium	28-Joey
29-Brett,Regina,Joey	30-Brett,Regina,Joey	31-MemorialStadium	32-Joey,Brett	33

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