Souvenir of the Heart

A few weeks ago, I was watching a Chicago Cubs' baseball game on television. Chicago's Wrigley Field is historic and the men's' restrooms equally reek of uniqueness. A batter on the opposing team hit a home run and I watched this perhaps 12-year old kid throw the souvenir home run ball back on to the field much to the delight of the Cubs' fans. At that very moment I thought of what Forest Gump's mommy told him, "Stupid is what stupid does."  Then upon second thought, 'Fluent is what fluent discards.'

I concluded two things: First, parents today are far better off financially than the 1947 'Bud' & Lou Roustio of East St. Louis, Illinois and secondly, there is less of a nostalgic connection  between fan and Major League baseball players. Let me elaborate about the money/value aspect: My first pair of baseball spikes (shoes) were NOT the baseball spike shoes we envision. In 1947, I bought some steel cleats at the hardware store and screwed them onto the sole-bottoms of some old dress shoes. I never owned a 'new' baseball bat but instead, we kids hung around the adult summer Sunday Municipal league games and waited for a broken bat that we could take home and reinforce with a screw and some electrician's tape. The hot summer sweating hands gripping the sticky tapped bat created a tacky grip which was a forerunner to today's 'pine-tar.'

Back in those days, there were two Major League baseball teams in St. Louis and both the Cardinals and Browns used old Sportsman Park, located at Grand and Dodier Avenues. The Browns had difficulty drawing fans. To compensate for poor attendance, the Browns offered 'Knot Hole' membership tickets for youngsters. I remember that you only paid the tax on the ticket upon presentation. Of course, you had to sit in a section down the left field line beyond the bull pen and if a foul ball came into that area, the Browns' management gave to souvenir ball holding kid a choice: Give the ball back or keep the ball and leave the stadium. It was dumb-ass thinking like that which caused the St. Louis Browns to become the Baltimore Orioles; we were outta that stadium faster than Satchel Paige could get from the mound to the dugout after striking out Ted Williams with his renown 'hesitation-pitch.'

I was perhaps 10 years old and attending a Cardinals game at Sportsman Park. My dad liked to take me early back then so I could watch both teams batting practice; something fans pass on a lot these days and also many batting practices are concluded before stadium gates open. This particular night, while locating our seats, I looked up to see my dad running across aisles of chairs in a mission to retrieve a foul ball during the batting practice. WOW! A Major League baseball. I did not keep the ball as a souvenir but, you guessed it; I played sandlot ball with it. Makes no difference. The important thing remains; my memory of the smile on my dad's face when he handed that ball to me...it warms my heart all over again.