"Sit down and watch the game!" my dad would say. Today, that's my only recollection of going to my first major league baseball game. It was at Yankee Stadium sometime in the early 1960s. I vaguely recall being in the loge or middle deck looking down at the field. Today they call it the terrace level. That might explain why, even to this day, I still prefer the loge. There was something about the architecture of the old stadium that allowed a refreshing summer breeze to fill the loge like no other part of the complex. An older cousin of mine who was also there that day began to fill me in on the details many years later. "Whitey Ford was pitching, and Mantle got a home run." At least that's what I think he said. He also told me who the Yankees hosted, but I forgot. At least if I knew the date, I could "look it up," as Casey Stengel would say.

Sometime in the summer of 1998, I took my 8-year-old son to his first major league game, also at Yankee Stadium. I know he still remembers that day more than I do. But I do recall sitting in the lower deck near third base. David Cone was pitching against the Minnesota Twins. Little did we know that we would see him again, one year later, on July 18, Yogi Berra Day, when he pitched a perfect game against the now-defunct Montreal Expos. But that's another story.

Since then, we've been to a few games at Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Camden Yards, and AT&T Park in San Francisco. We've seen some crazy things - a pop-up foul ball landing in a kid's ice cream, my in-law on the jumbotron lathering himself with sunblock, and a brawl involving A-Rod and the Red Sox - big surprise! We got to see the Yankees host the San Francisco Giants – not a common occurrence in those days. Then we saw the Giants at their stadium, where I had the worst pizza in my life. But Tim Lincecum pitched a good game even though the Giants lost. The first time we saw the Yankees on the road was at a night game in Baltimore. It was also our first major league night game. We got to see Mariano Rivera several times. But perhaps the most memorable was on the occasion when he received his Hall of Fame plaque.

My son has been to a lot more games than I have and in many more stadiums. He even went to a World Series game in 2014 when the Giants played against the Royals in Kansas City. And when he worked for the Yankees, he was at the stadium every day. A couple of summers ago, I met him at the stadium to watch a game. I was so excited to see him I couldn't stop talking, and I couldn't sit still. He had to tell me, "Sit down and watch the game, Dad!"

Story Copyright © 2021 by Michael DeFrancesco