tree. And if my friends know more about baseball and the Orioles than my hosts do, then we’d be out of touch with the reality of our listeners, who all lived through the “Magic” years like my friends and I did.
Or maybe, we’d be a lot like the Orioles are: out of touch with the reality of this city!
And even those friends in those wedding night pictures who I didn’t go to games with, I at least have one baseball memory with them or one shared experience that involves the sport. I’ve either gone to a game with them, seen a game in their city or have ignored them one evening with one eye on a TV set to watch a baseball game.
There were 300 people in the room on my wedding night and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM came to me, in one way or another, through baseball!
WITHOUT BASEBALL, THESE PEOPLE WOULDN’T BE IN MY LIFE!
It’s the single most common ingredient in virtually every long-term relationship in my life before 1998.
Honestly, if you were a girl I met who didn’t either like baseball or WANT to like baseball, you had no shot with me. Football, I might be able to tolerate (but probably not!) It’s only played a couple days a week for a couple months of the year. But baseball IS my summer. EVERY night, just like Cal!
When I was syndicated I was dating the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Met her in Jamaica. She was 23, blonde, blue-eyed, Swedish, lived in Manhattan and spoke four languages. She was 5-feet-2, 108 pounds, and had a natural full-C cup if you’re a match.com surfer.
I did a show in Manhattan for Sporting News Radio, pretty much whenever I wanted to go. She looked like a cross between Anna Kournikova and Tiger Woods’ wife. She was NO JOKE, if you get my drift!
I met her in September, visited her in October during the World Series (and its always a good bet you’ll be in New York in October if you like baseball). We dated here and there all winter, went to Vegas, had some fun. In April, baseball returned.
I went to Gotham to do some shows at Mickey Mantle’s for a Yankees-Red Sox series. I took her to Yankee Stadium, enthused about teaching her the finer points of the game.
It was, quite frankly, like teaching a Martian baseball. Or probably like teaching me cricket.
To her a “strike” was a punch. To her a “ball” was an object. To her an “out” was something you did the to trash. To her an “inning” was a strange pronunciation for a slang navel.
She laughed AT baseball for nine innings, didn’t understand a THING.
Nor did she want to.
It was a RED SOX-YANKEES GAME AT YANKEE STADIUM!
Needless to say, she could have had the bedside technique of Jenna Jameson, the willpower of Pamela Anderson, the class and skill of Sheryl Crow and the intellect and beauty of Queen Noor, but if she didn’t know baseball or CARE to know baseball, she just wasn’t getting the ring.
Ah, well, I still have the pictures, right?
(Incidentally, and this has nothing to do with baseball but everything to do with my Swedish supermodel-looking baseball hater, the final straw came one night when we were watching Bob Costas’ late night celebrity talk show on NBC. Hugh Hefner was the guest. She turned to me, looked me in the eye and said: “Who’s Hugh Hefner?”
Game, set, match!
Then there were my younger days, before I fully understood women.
I once met a girl at Eastpoint Mall. She was a tall, hot, redhead who worked in the Hutzler’s where my bank was located. We flirted, made a first date. I took her to the Rusty Scupper (which was a MAJOR splurge for me then, but it’s where she insisted on going and I tried to be a good date). The dinner ended around 9-ish so we jumped in the car, put the O’s game on and, lo
