Old Time Family Baseball

Everyone likes writing about the best of baseball. Top-10 lists. Superlatives. Things like that.  But in the heart and on the minds of every baseball fan are moments of … baseball shame.  These are my most shameful moments as a baseball fan.

• I went several years when I was boy believing that Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles was black. In hindsight I know how this happened: I was trading baseball cards with a friend and a George Scott card was sitting on top of a Nettles card and I matched the wrong name with the wrong picture. It had to be that, because I really only consumed games on the radio in those days, and in my mind, Nettles looked just like George Scott when the announcers talked about him.  Flash forward to the 1981 World Series. Nettles made a play at third base and the camera pulled in on a closeup. I was shocked and I told my dad of my confusion. He told me that Nettles used to be black until he “had the surgery.” After that I went a long time believing that people could have race-change surgery before my dad told me he was joking.

• I admire him as a player and a manager, but through no fault of his own, I have always been vaguely creeped out by Kirk Gibson. I’m certain this has something to do with the fact that my mom, watching a Tigers game over my shoulder in the early-to-mid 80s, said that she really liked watching him run. And she said it with … enthusiasm. Shudder.

• I was a Tigers fan from the time I knew what baseball was until I moved away from Michigan and to West Virginia in 1985 at the age of 11. Within a year or two I became a Braves fan due to being able to watch them on TBS all the time.  I had weird feelings of guilt about this for years. Like I had an affair or something. I’m over it now — I ended up marrying my mistress and we’ve been happy for nearly 27 years — but I still get occasional pangs.

• As a Braves fan, Game Seven of the 1991 World Series should have been the biggest must-see game of all time, but I missed just about all of it. I was a freshman in college, and I had gone back home for the weekend. As I drove back up to school that Sunday evening, I couldn’t get the game on the radio at all. It was really late when I finally got reception. I sat in the parking lot and listened to Dan Gladden hit the double and it was all over. I am not the most superstitious person on the planet, but part of me felt like my missing the game had something to do with the Braves losing.  As penance, I got a tape of the game and watched it all a few days later, knowing that it would end in sorrow

• In October 1993, I went to the last game ever played in Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. On the way out, I discovered that a guy had parked with his bumper crammed up against mine. There was no apparent damage, but I was really upset, and impulsively keyed his car. It’s been a long time since that day and I still feel horrible about my moment of vandalism. How can my love for a 1987 Chevy Cavalier have inspired a criminal act?

• I think I was good for the next 18 years, but this past October I once again acted shamefully. Game 7 of the World Series took place at the end of what was an absolutely horrible and exhausting week for me. As I sat on the couch and watched the game — I believe it was the sixth inning — I leaned back a bit. When I nodded forward, the Cardinals were spraying champagne all over each other. I, a professional baseball writer, fell asleep during Game 7 of what was perhaps the most exciting World Series in a decade.  I tried to rewind and watch what I missed, fast-forwarding between what seemed like key moments, but it wasn’t the same.

Now that I think about it, many of these things aren’t merely shameful. They’re sins. In the name of forgiveness, I shall now say 40 “Take Me Out to the Ballgames” and 10 “Centerfields.”

Ugh. “Centerfield?”  Terrible song. That’s pretty shameful too.

Craig Calcaterra writes the HardballTalk blog at NBCSports.com.

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