First professional night baseball game  − 1 May, 1980

I remember the game - Mets versus the Reds at Shea Stadium in New York. I rushed home from school that day and frantically finished my homework without the usual pre-event prodding from my mother to do so. My father came home from work early, and we made the hour-long drive along the Merritt Parkway from Trumbull, Conn., to Queens in time to watch batting practice - a feature I still enjoy watching. We met up with a co-worker of my father's and his son, who was about my age, and stayed for the entire game. We didn't get home until almost midnight - well past my usual 9:30 p.m. bedtime! I got up for school the next day not tired, but full of energy from the excitement and adventure I experienced the night before.

The Mets won that game (the team my father and I rooted for in those years), but the outcome was not as important to me as the time spent with my father. When my father asked me if I wanted to go a few weeks prior, he made it clear that it would be without my mother or younger brother, Tom, since he was only six at the time and too young to stay out for a weekday night game. The game would be an event my father and I would share only with each other.

In times before and since, my favorite memories of my father centered on baseball. Twenty-six years later, I sorry to say that we don't have the closest of relationships. But even during my teenage years when we got along the least, baseball was always a topic and experience we could discuss passionately with one another. When we'd go to a game, the field would act almost like a demilitarized zone. The energy of the grass, bases and players would seemingly wipe out any animosity we may have felt for each other at that time.

The game means a lot to me; more so for the family memories it brings than anything else.