Who Loves It More?!?

• stadmin
• May 27, 2025
• 4:46 pm
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• Who Loves It More?!?

Baseball has provided me with a lifetime of stories to tell, but one of my fondest` memories of my playing days didn't happen on the field.

It was 1999 and I was Freshman at Brown.

The Red Sox and Yankees were facing off in the playoffs and as if the oldest rivalry in baseball clashing in October wasn't cool enough, the pitching matchup in Game 2 saw future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez taking the mound against former Red Sox legend and all-time Cy Young award leader Roger Clemens.

Yankees vs Red Sox, an epic pitching duel between two all-time greats, in the playoffs, and Fenway Park only an hour drive from Providence? No way was I going to miss that.

The only problem? I had no tickets, no car, and no money.

Our team had just finished up a Friday afternoon fall practice, and I floated the idea of driving up to Boston to a couple of my more die-hard baseball teammates. Our Shortstop (and now current Cubs VP of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz) agreed to drive and along with 2 other teammates we grabbed some blankets, sleeping bags, our warmest jackets, and ski hats, and piled in his car.

Yes, everyone playing college baseball loves the game but even in those ranks, not everyone is crazy enough to try to pull off a Fenway trip like this...

Why the extra warm clothes and sleeping bags?

The Pedro/Clemens matchup was on Saturday, was 100% sold out, and we didn't have tickets. This was years before StubHub would be invented and while I can't speak for the other guys, I had approximately $104 to my name so scalping tickets was out of the question even if we could find some.

Our only chance to get into the ballpark was to be first in line when the box office opened ON SATURDAY MORNING and hope that the team would release some last-minute tickets at face value.

Of all the 0-2 hacks I had taken in my life, this was probably the biggest one.

We drove straight to Fenway from campus, parked his car, and settled in on the sidewalk right outside the box office. By the time we got the ballpark around 8pm on Friday, there were already about 20 other (more?) completely insane people already there and in line ahead of us.

(I took this picture on Saturday before I made my way into the ballpark to see the Sox take on the O's. The red circle is the exact spot we spend the night.)

I'd never slept on a city street before, and definitely not mid-October in New England, but I can happily say that night on Van Ness Street would be my last. Incredibly cold, unbelievably uncomfortable, and totally worth it because....

When the box office opened at 10am on gameday, the team DID release a handful of unclaimed media tickets and the 4 of us all got 2 tickets each for $50 a pop...score!

The other guys immediately turned around and sold their extra ticket for a 6x profit.

I called my father, a lifelong die-hard Yankees fan, told him the short version of how I ended up with an extra ticket to the game, and asked if he wanted to come up.

He was on the golf course when I called and also being an insane baseball fan, he immediately picked up his ball, walked off the course, drove to the airport in DC, and made it to Boston in time for first pitch.

Pedro was dominant going 7 innings, striking out 12 while only walking 2. On the offensive side, Nomar went 4 for 5 with a double and a HR as the Red Sox cruised to a 13-1 victory.

Every single part of this story is 100% true and relayed from memory; everything except the score of the game and the stats.

I had to look that up.

While this is one of the best baseball stories of my life, the thing I remember the LEAST is what happened in the game.

I remember my teammates vividly. I remember the experience of sleeping on the street like it was yesterday. I remember how excited we were to actually get tickets after our harebrained plan actually worked. I remember getting to surprise my Dad with a ticket.

But the actually play on the field? The actual stats? No memory.

And this is exactly what these Little League years are going to be like for you and your son. You might remember a play here or a game there or a score from a particularly exciting game, but most of the details will fade. In a couple years' time (and probably sooner) nobody will remember his batting average, what his team's record was in Minors, or which team won the division in Majors.

Don't believe me? Ask your son what the score was in his first game this season. Ask him how many hits he had in his 5th game. Ask him his team's record 2 seasons ago. He'll have no clue. And I hope you don't either 🙂

But what he will remember years from now is his Little League experience. He'll remember his teammates. He'll remember his coaches (both good and bad, so please be the kind of coach who gets remembered fondly!). He'll remember how baseball made him feel as a kid. He'll remember getting a slushy at the Snack Shack and playing pickle in the outfield after the game. He'll be able to picture his Little League field in his head FOREVER.

Same goes for you.

I played in hundreds of baseball games in my life and I can remember the specific details of only a few. And kid these days play WAY more games than I did which means remembering specific scores and moments on the field will be even harder to do.

I remember my childhood best friend making the most unlikely catch in LF (his first flyball catch ever) to win a championship game. I have no idea how old we were, what our team name was, who we were playing, or what the score was.

I remember my best friend in High School hitting a walk-off Grand Slam with 2 outs in the bottom of the last inning, down by 3 runs against our rival school.

I remember the day I went 6-6 with 4 Homeruns in a doubleheader my Senior Year of High school.

I remember losing the Ivy League Championship game on a walk-off bloop single to Harvard in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs.

Maybe I could come up with a handful of other game highlights if I really thought about it, but what's stuck after all these years are the incredible friendships baseball has given me, how much joy I (still) feel being around the game, and memories like sleeping outside Fenway with my teammates.

As the 2025 Little League season comes to end, let's cherish the trips to the snack shack, the friends we've made (kids and parents alike), and the incredible local baseball community we're all insanely lucky to be a part of and not got stuck in the weeds worrying about performance, win/loss records, that call we disagreed with, or who made All-Stars. None of that matters now and it really won't matter in a few years.

Let's just be grateful for this precious time we get watching our kids play the game we all love with their friends ...while it lasts.

PLAY HARD, HAVE FUN!