The Thinker: Rich Galen

  
Google


The definition of the word mull.
Mullings by Rich Galen
An American Cyber-Column By Rich Galen
Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Recent Issues of Mullings          Secret Decoder Ring for this Issue

Opening Day 2014

Rich Galen

Monday March 31, 2014

Twitter


Click here for an Easy Print Version

NOTE: This is an updated version of the MULLINGS originally published in April 2005 on the day of the Washington Nationals' first-ever baseball game at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC.

  • September 6, 1995 I flew to Austin, Texas to watch a baseball game on TV with The Lad who was then an undergrad at the University of Texas. The occasion was Cal Ripken's 2,131st consecutive Major League game, breaking Lou Gehrig's record.

  • Baseball has been a bond between us.

  • When the Lad played Little League I rarely missed a game. In McLean, Virginia it was not at all noteworthy to see national leaders - Administration and Congressional, Democrat and Republican - working in the snack bar or helping prepare one of the fields.

  • I remember leaning on the centerfield fence with the head of the President's Domestic Policy Council on one side of me and a US Senator on the other, discussing the most important issue of the day: Shouldn't the shortstop (who was about 11-years-old) be playing a couple of steps toward first base with a left-handed batter up?

  • Over the years the Lad and I had gone to many baseball games in Baltimore; Washington, DC having been shut out of Major League Baseball since before he had been born. One night we saw Ripken make not one error, but two. The Lad was - literally - concerned that we were witnessing early evidence of the end of the world.

    SIDEBAR

    One time, when Reed was in his teens, the O's were playing the Yankees in a late season game and the only seats available were, literally, higher than the stadium lights. There were bats flying around feasting on the bugs attracted by the lights.

    Reed asked what they were:

    "Bats. But, a very special kind of bats," I said. "Baseball bats."

    Our relationship has never quite been the same.

    END SIDEBAR

  • We had wanted to be together the night that Ripken broke Gehrig's record. We had dinner in Austin, went to my hotel room, ordered every dessert on the menu from room service, and sobbed in concert as, at the end of the fifth inning (thus making it a regulation game) Cal took a lap around the stadium in acknowledgment of the fact that the fans would not let the game re-start until he had done so.

  • Nineteen years have now gone by. The Lad has gone from being a college student, to being a member of President George W. Bush's staff, and now the father of two of the world's most beautiful daughters - my granddaughters.

  • In 2005, after 34 years, baseball came home to Washington. Two different clubs called the Senators had deserted the city, so the current team is called the Nationals which is a double entendre in that they are a National League team, and they represent the Nation's Capital.

  • According to the Washington Post, in the years between Major League teams the population of the region went from 2.9 million to 5.8 million; ticket prices went from top price of $6 to a top of $95; and gasoline has gone from 36 cents per gallon to nearly three dollars.

  • As you are all too aware, gasoline is now about $4 per gallon and, for today's opening day game at National's Park, the top ticket price on StubHub (not counting crazy talk) is about $660.

  • At 6:52 AM, the morning of the Nationals' first game - exactly 12 hours before President Bush was scheduled to throw out the first pitch - The Lad came through the arrival doors at Dulles airport, returning the favor of my flight to Austin for a baseball game a decade earlier.

  • Fathers and sons - parents and kids - have been going to baseball games for over a hundred years. This father and this son have been blessed to have shared unique opportunities over the course of our 37 years together. That Opening Day was one of them.

  • Baseball has been a continuing thread in our relationship, The Lad and I.

  • On Opening Day 2005, we sat along the first base line and watched a ballgame together, ate hotdogs, worried over defensive alignments, ducked foul balls, and went home happy.

  • Reed now lives in Southern California with his wife and two daughters. Our days of travelling cross country to watch a baseball games are probably over.

  • But that one day in 2005, at creaky old RFK Stadium, watching that one baseball game with Reed is burned not just into my memory, but into my soul.

  • Life might get better than that. But, it doesn't have to get much better.

  • On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A Mullfoto of Reed and me at the ballpark, nine years ago.

    -- END --

    Copyright © 2014 Barrington Worldwide, LLC



  • Become a
    Paid Mullings Subscriber!


    (To join the FREE mailing list or to unsubscribe Click Here)


    Recent Issues of Mullings          Secret Decoder Ring for this Issue


    Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?

    Copyright �2013 Barrington Worldwide, LLC | Site design by Campaign Solutions.