Editor's note: This is a weekly column from former sports reporter and editor Mike Bass. Bass will be contributing to The Enquirer by offering advice for sports fans, athletes and youth sports parents and coaches through a weekly Q&A. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter @SportsFanCoach1.
CHICAGO — We pose with our baseballs for the phone camera. Each of us holding a foul ball.
Father and son.
Can you imagine?
“Which seats were you in?” a fan from the next section jokes later. “I want to sit there next time.”
You never know what can happen when you attend a live sporting event.
* * *
This is my idea of a perfect game.
My son and I. Watching baseball. Healthy. Vaccinated. Back at Wrigley Field. Two generations of Cubs fans. I grew up this way. Adam grew into it.
I am a Chicago native and Cubs fan since childhood. A journalism career pushed me out of town and eventually lured me to Cincinnati, where my two sons grew up. They were not into watching sports. I was cool with that.
Years later, a job lured Adam to Chicago. In time, he would meet an incredible woman who lived within walking distance of Wrigley and who enjoyed an occasional Cubs game. He fell in love. With the woman who is now his wife. And with a team full of personalty rising toward a historic World Series championship.
In 2015, Adam was a full-on Cubs fan. He knew the players. He knew their traits. I’d never seen this side of him. I was back in Chicago now, too, and for my birthday, he took me to our first Cubs game together at Wrigley. I smile just thinking about it. We talked baseball, Cubs and life. The Cubs lost 4-3, when a late-inning comeback fell just short. I bought him a Cubs hat, because a father does that for a son. He gave me so much more.
We would go to another Cubs game in 2018, when the Reds were in town and David Bote would sent us away with a walkoff home run in the 10th inning.
“These are the days,” I wrote on Facebook, “that make being back in Chicago so memorable.”
* * *
This is my idea of a perfect day.
Live sports is back and safe. The Reds are in town to face the Cubs. I have tickets. Adam is available.
I don’t care about the weather on this late May day. Rain was inevitable, but a Friday in Cincinnati taught me not to let that stop me. I had planned to write a column from a Reds night game until rain and early deadlines compelled me to write from a Bengals afternoon practice. Oh, the rain came. It delayed the opening pitch by almost 2 1/2 hours. Then Tom Browning pitched a perfect game.
I wasn’t missing this. Gametime temperature was 50, but a damp wind made this feel like football weather. We dressed for it. Kind of. The rain? Not much and barely noticeable. The conditions and pitching did stifle the offense, but the action in the stands is thrilling.
Foul balls keep coming to our area.
I have caught a few, mostly using Bob Uecker’s strategy for catching a knuckleball: “Wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.” I did trap one line drive headed right at a colleague looking the other way and seated next to me in a Riverfront Stadium press box. Trapping it atop the desk was reflexive. If I’m not protecting someone, I’m proteching myself from getting drilled — again.
I was 12. I was the one looking the other way, standing in the left-field bleachers at Wrigley, when the Phillies’ Greg Luzinski lined a batting-practice home run off of my chest. Ouch! I didn’t get the ball, only a bruise showing the baseball’s stitching. I was taken to a medical area and asked if I wanted to go home. No way. The nurse gave me some Cubs stickers, I returned to my seat and I saw the Cubs’ Burt Hooton throw a no-hitter, still the only one I have seen in person. It was on a cold day, just like this.
Today, we are well situated for a foul. Third-base line. Upper deck, lower level. A few rows from the railing. Seating capacity just hit 60 percent and almost 25,000 fans, but only 18,478 show on my cold, rainy, perfect day. Empty seats can ping-pong fouls to the rest of us.
In the third inning, the Reds’ Tyler Naquin hits a foul that flies behind and to the left of Adam.
“Could I have caught it?” he asked.
“Nah, it was too far from you,” I said.
The ball bounces and lands a row below us, well out of our reach, right in the hands of a guy wearing a Reds spring training hat with the 19th-century logo.
That guy would be Cincinnati native Will Kladakis.
* * *
Will has been hooked on the Reds since 1990. He gets the father-and-son vibe.
“When I was 8 years old, the Reds won the World Series,” said Will, who grew up in Indian Hill. “Talk about your formative years. I was in third grade, and it just stuck with me ever since. My dad took me to probably 20 games that year; I went to Game 2 of the World Series. I remember it very vividly.”
Living in Chicago the last four years, he tries to see the Reds when they come to Wrigley Field and to nearby Milwaukee. And he returns to Cincinnati a lot to see his family. And the Reds. He has a 20-game season-ticket package. He was there for Opening Day this season. He also has tickets for FC Cincinnati and the Bengals.
“I love going to games.” he says. “I love being with the crowd. I love the social aspect of it.”
“And the energy in the stadium,’’ says his girlfriend, Jill Watson.
“Yeah, the energy in the stadium,” Will saya. “You miss that.”
Today is his first time back at Wrigley, and he is here with Jill, her parents and sister, and a friend in a Cubs hat, Megan Coffey, director of strategic brand engagement for Bearcats athletics who also is an Illinois graduate.
Today is not Will’s first fall ball.
“I have actually caught 12 foul balls if you can believe it,” Will wrote to me later. “We used to sit in section 213 in the Green Seats at Riverfront and that was a perfect spot for foul balls (from right handed hitters). Jill's sister Jenn ended up keeping the ball.”
* * *
Here comes another foul ball in our general vicinity.
Adam sees it bouncing. A lot. Then a Reds fan in a higher row points to where the ball has settled, so Adam can pick it up. this is Adam’s first ball from a game, but he offers it to that Reds fan, because a Reds player had hit it. (Can a father be prouder?) The guy graciously declines and says he has plenty at home.
We take a selfie. Naturally.
* * *
Here comes another foul ball.
It hits in the section to my right … bounces sideways … and up … floating in slow motion toward me … and I wonder if I want to try to catch this … then wonder if my gloved hands will catch this … then calmly realize I will catch this… and it nestles softly into my cupped hands.
I look around for children who might want the ball, but don’t see any near me. Then I stop and realize what a gift this is. A Reds fan behind us is amazed this can happen to a father and son and offers to take our picture. This is the same Reds fan who had helped Adam locate his ball.
I am so lost in the moment, I don’t know who hit the ball or when. Same as when Adam caught his ball.
* * *
The Cubs won 1-0.
Bote homered in the fifth inning. Bote keeps winning games Adam and me.
Because Adam does not have cable, he cannot watch the Cubs on their relatively new TV network, so he does not closely follow them anymore. At least he has this. As we leave, I ask Adam if he wants to get a souvenir.
“I already have the best one,” he said.
He has a ball.
I have a ball.
All that’s missing is an Oprah meme saying, “Everyone has a ball!”
Remember to email Bass at [email protected] or reach out to him @SportsFanCoach1 on Twitter if you want to be included next week. His website is MikeBassCoaching.com.
