My First Big League Baseball Game

Image Credit: Ballparks of Baseball

LOS ANGELES, CA — Baseball has always been a way for a father and son to bond. Whether having a catch or spending time together at a game, I will never forget my first baseball game with my Dad and three busloads of little leaguers at Ebbets Field on a warm summer day. With the use of the internet and the information burned into my memory, I figured out that the game was on June 23, 1956.

I would be seeing my father’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers play the Cincinnati Red Legs that day, and I recall the first sight of the light towers and the massive building rising above the neighborhood around Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, and then walking through a dark, cool tunnel, and having a burst of light hit me like a cloud from heaven.

We watched the Dodgers, Yankees, and Giants in New York back then on a black-and-white television so I was not expecting what was to come next: color! The infield was incredible, with beautifully manicured green grass and amazing brown dirt. Then I saw those pure white Dodger uniforms with that blue script and red number in front. Even the color pictures on a baseball card or a photo in Life or Look magazines couldn’t match seeing them for real.

The first player I recognized was the Reds’ big first baseman, Ted Kluszewski, with his massive bare arms exploding out from under the cut-sleeve uniforms the Red Legs wore. I knew he never wore a sweatshirt under his jersey from a baseball card I had of him. My Dad told me that Jackie Robinson, Pee-Wee Reese, and Duke Snyder played that day, and Frank Robinson played left field right in front of where we were seated. Gil Hodges also played left field that day, and hit two home runs in what would be a walk-off 7-6 victory for the Dodgers when they scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Twenty-year old Dodger left-hander Sandy “Bonus Baby” Koufax was the starting pitcher. There were a lot of future Hall of Fame players playing that summer day in Brooklyn.

On the trip home, I remember the other fathers mentioned Don Zimmer getting hit by a pitched ball and having to be taken off the field on a stretcher. That stuck with me because, as an eight-year-old kid, I was always afraid of getting hit with a pitch.

One thing that has stayed with me to this day was the first time I saw the batter hit a ball way out to where I was sitting in the left-field grandstands, and then, seconds later, hearing the sound of the ball hit a seat.

To this day, whenever I see and hear that happen, it brings me back to Ebbets Field.

A ballpark’s sights, sounds, and smells are special to me. But then the most amazing thing happens, a ballgame.

I have been hooked ever since then, and I know my last breath on this earth will come when the last thing I think of is being back at Ebbets Field on that beautiful summer day with my Dad.

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