The following was in response to a question posed by a sports columnist in our local paper, The Wenatchee World.

What can lay claim to your love and passion for the better part of a lifetime? There is family, perhaps your faith in God and maybe a friend or two.  I add to that short list, baseball. My fervor as a sports fan has narrowed over the years and now focuses primarily on baseball and specifically the San Francisco Giants, with a nod to the Seattle Mariners. It’s all rather simple. I grew up about 10 miles south of the city by the bay, just a few years after the Giants had left New York for the west coast.  Until their recent success, the 1960’s had been the golden age of the Giants. Their lineup card was a glimpse into baseball’s Hall of Fame. A Giants box score showed names like Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, and Orlando Cepeda; all in their prime and all destined for Cooperstown. That they only appeared in one World Series during those years is still a mystery and a confirmation that baseball is fundamentally about pitching. Still, it was a wonderful time to come of age as a baseball fan.

Why do I root? As a boy, it was the joy of seeing men playing a kid’s game, my game, a game that I loved. It made me dream; dream that I could some day play at Candlestick Park. The notion that you could actually get paid to play baseball was almost beyond comprehension. That I would have played for nothing goes without saying.  It was more a question of how much would I have paid to play. The dream of wearing “the black and orange” took a long time to fade, but fade it did under the reality of my own limitations.

The dream may have ended, but the fond memories of falling asleep listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons on the radio, or watching a televised game, (there were only nine each year) against the hated Dodgers, endure to this day. I was at Candlestick with my parents on the last day of the 1962 season when a Willie May home run and a Dodger loss to the Cardinals meant San Francisco and Los Angeles were tied after 162 games, and would play three more to decide who would meet the Yankees. These and other Giant moments are some of the most vivid memories of my formative years.

Yet over half a century later, why do I still root? Simply put, there are few better ways to connect to the joys of my childhood and the memory of my dad, (who took me to Game 1 of the 1962 World Series).  Baseball remains a great way to share life with my entire extended family, siblings, in-laws, nieces and nephews, but most of all, my 88 year old mom who watches the Mariners faithfully. My nod to the Mariners goes back to that magical 1995 season when my wife and our two boys experienced the unique thrill of a pennant race. We all watched together, as Edgar Martinez hit that double down the left field line, to give the Mariners the win over the Yankees in Game 5 of the Divisional Series. In the final analysis, I root because as Ken Griffey Jr. looked up from the dog pile at home plate, in that iconic Mariner moment, he smiled. And baseball makes me smile.  Yes, that’s why I root.

PS  I was supposed to be at that game, but we were watching at home.  That’s a story for another day!