March 17, 2021: The First Time

Next up in my review of the Baseball Seasons episodes is 1983. Ah yes, I remember the year well. That summer was the first time I played organized baseball at Harrison Park. That year also brought me my first ever baseball memory. It was a fun time… sort of.

But first, 1983 was cool for another reason: one of the records that was thought to be unbreakable was broken… 3 times in a single year! Walter Johnson, or the Big Train as he was known, held the record for most career strikeouts by a pitcher with 3,509. He pitched for 21 seasons from 1907-1927 for the Washington Senators. In 83, his record would be surpassed by 3 different guys; you may have heard of them: Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, and Gaylord Perry. Nolan Ryan did it first and was slightly ahead of Carlton; Perry did it later in the year. Anyways, then Ryan missed about a month, so Carlton caught up. So you had Ryan and Carlton battling all year long for the career strikeout leader title; I think of the Sosa McGwire HR battle. If it was half as cool as that, it would have been great; what a time to be alive! Haha… Of course when the dust settled, years later, it would be Nolan Ryan who is the true strikeout king. At 5,714 career strikeouts, I think it’s pretty safe to say, THAT is a record that will never be broken.

But yeah, more importantly, 1983 was the first year I played baseball. My dad took my 7 year old butt over to the Boys Club where I joined the Dodgers in Pee Wee league. Funny how I would hate the Dodgers later in life… But back then, that was my team; the team that I played for was the Dodgers pretty much my entire youth. For my first appearance, they threw me on the pitcher’s mound… not to pitch, oh no… the other team was hitting off the cone; yes, it was a construction cone not a batting tee like today… my Dad actually scooped one of those off the street one day around that time that we used for practice. So there I am, first time ever in a game, just standing there, glove at my side. They told me to be ready, but I wasn’t; I should have been. Kid comes up hits a line drive that bounces off my chin; I was knocked out cold. Next thing you know, I woke up in our dugout, laying on the bench, looking up at my dad who was holding a bag of ice on my chin; someone had ran across the street to get it from a bar. Yes, welcome to baseball. Cool thing was that I had the stitches of the baseball on my chin; not so cool thing was that my Mom didn’t want me to play baseball from that day forward. Thankfully, she was overruled; I did have to wear a mouthpiece though when I pitched later on in my youth.

But 1983 also brought my first real baseball memory, and of course, it was the Sox. I clearly remember when Harold Baines hit the fly out that sent Julio Cruz scampering home to clinch the division for the White Sox; we were jumping around. I remember a lot of that year actually; although Harold is my favorite White Sox of all time, back then, Ron Kittle was the man. He would win rookie of the year; he also hit the longest home run off the top of a telephone pole when I was impersonating him during one of our games in the backyard. I liked Greg Luzinski and of course, the uniforms at the time which still stand as the best Sox uniforms ever in my opinion. Yeah, that was fun. I don’t recall any of the playoffs; I wonder why. The Sox lost to the Orioles, lead by Ripken and Murray, who eventually went on to beat the Phillies 3 to 1 in the World Series. That would be the last appearance in the World Series by a once great franchise in the Baltimore Orioles.

Although I was also a Sox fan growing up, it didn’t stick; I eventually “picked a side”… that may have had something to do with what happened the following year in 1984; that’s the next episode up. But yeah, back then, I rooted for both Chicago baseball teams; why can’t we do that today? That’s an entirely separate blog. In 1983 though, I feel like I broke my cherry for baseball; it would start a love affair that continues strongly to this day. I loved watching it, I loved playing it, I loved going to the game; I still do. And now, I get to watch my son play it, and see his face light up when I take him to games. Oh yeah, that reminds me… is he going to play baseball this year or not? Guess I better figure that out.