Quote:
Originally Posted by chinaski
That's a wonderful thing man, to have witnessed him in action.
A bit before my time, but I got to see many Royals games as a kid in the 80's, my Grandparents had season tickets...2nd row seats behind the visiting team dugout. Got to meet some players too, notably Brett Saberhagen, who was won the Cy Young Award.
Saw George Brett, Bo Jackson, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco and many others.
I'll never forget watching George Brett hit a home run, the sound of it, the way it looked. Dude had an incredible swing. Just a cool experience. Baseball is so much better at the park than on TV.
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Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were big-time heroes for kids my age back in the late '60s and early '70s. I never saw either of them play in person, but would see Hank on TV sometimes when the Braves played the Phillies. I was watching the night he broke Ruth's record, only because it was on National TV. The only time I can remember seeing Mays on TV was his last season when he played for the Mets. We got lots of Mets games on local broadcast in the Philly area.
Another one of my heroes was Steve Carlton. I saw him pitch in person many times. One of the most memorable was Game 2 of the 1980 World Series. My Dad scored seats in the last row of the lower deck, pretty close to right behind home plate. Carlton pitched against George Brett and your Royals, and won the game.
A bunch of us Phillies fans tried to get tickets to what was sure to be the game where Carlton broke 3,000 strikeouts in 1981. We came up empty. A few hours before the game, I got a call that the father of a guy we knew had scored 4 tickets to the game, and me and my best friend Grahame could go with them if we could get a ride to their house in a half hour or less. We got there. The seats were in the nosebleeds in short right field, but we were happy to be there! IIRC, he struck out the side in the first inning to reach the milestone.
Good times.
