Baseball... starting early helps

Getting hooked on the game as granny listens to Harry Caray doing the Cardinals' broadcasts, discovering baseball cards and becoming a fan for life.

By Bryce Martin
3/12/2001

Early baseball memories can be indelible to the mind and soul.

Sure, the lure of the game will miss some people altogether, sad to say. For the rest of us it will unfold slowly, while we feel its first tugs and hang on for the full ride.... us lucky ones.

My first nose-dive into the game came from an uncle-in-law's grandmother. She would stretch out in a rocker on the high front porch of her Quonset hut home, dip a little snuff, and regularly cuss over the radio broadcasts of her beloved St. Louis Cardinals, while, also regularly, booting an orange-ringed cat from under her legs.

It was one of those love/hate match ups that I didn't fully understand at the time.

Then came the siren call: "It could be outta here...It may be...It is!"

Yep, home run, as only Cardinals announcer Harry Caray could call 'em.

When a neighborhood boy dug a fresh-opened batch of baseball cards from a front pocket, I was flabbergasted (yes, people once got that way).

I studied one for so long I took mental ownership. My unhidden ardor caused him delay. He refused to reveal any more cards. My passion just increased his suspicions of holding in his hands some unmeasured worth. He was right about that, yet neither of us could have guessed at the time how much those cards would increase in value. I had not known baseball cards existed. It wasn't just names on the radio anymore. Here was a color picture, the name Gene Bearden to go with it, pitcher, St. Louis Browns, a drawing of the mascot -- a brownie or elf -- and on the back, the guy's life story, practically. Dazzling before my eyes.

"Don't worry," the boy said. "There's more at the store."

Holy cow! Why didn't you just say so? Heck a mile.

Many more baseball cards followed. I learned the full names, birthplaces, birth dates, height, weight, career marks and season highs, measuring and memorizing without trying from the constant familiarization; other doses came in the daily reading of the box scores in newspaper agate type, baseball magazines, from television and radio. There were other diversions, but only when the summer ended - officially, after the last out of the World Series.

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