Fred Gants
To quote from a skit on Saturday Night Live: "Baseball been berry berry good to me.” My infatuation with America’s Pastime began in 1957, when I went to my first game with my dad at the original Yankee Stadium. Walking to the mezzanine I looked down on the fans on the lower deck that led to a beautiful green field in urban Bronx. My dad bought me a scorecard and pencil and taught me how to score.
In 1962, I attended my first game at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, with the Mets—in their very first year—hosting my then favorite team, the Dodgers. At this ballpark, which had stood empty after the baseball Giants departed New York for San Francisco in 1957, I watched legendary players Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Sandy Koufax, who gained my affection for refusing to pitch in the World Series on Yom Kippur.
In the mid-1960s in Westchester County, where I played youth baseball, the real star was my late brother. Ralph was a great Little League pitcher for the champion Mamaroneck Fire Department Foxes and hit several home runs. Years later I watched him hit a walk-off double down the right field line to give Mamaroneck High School the win over New Rochelle with Willie Mays Jr. in the outfield.
In the late ‘70s, while living in Madison, WI, I started a tradition of going to Wrigley Field with friends to see the Dodgers play the Cubs. Over the years, "Dodger Day" grew to 50 tickets and pictures with Ernie Banks, Bill Buckner (who later made an error causing the Red Sox to lose a World Series to the Mets), and Tom Lasorda.
On my wedding day in 1984, Jack Morris of the Tigers threw a no-hitter, and my friends held up baseball bats that my bride and I walked under. Ten years later, our family's Christmas card featured our three sons in their baseball uniforms. In 2014-- on the day he was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court--my brother Ralph threw out the first ball at Fenway Park.
To commemorate my relationship with baseball, my partner Tracy put together this pictured shrine, Including the photo of Ralph at Fenway, a Christmas card of my ball playing sons, a baseball bat mirror and autographed baseballs of Duke Snider, Bob Feller, and Tom Lasorda.
It's a berry berry good testament to a lifelong love of baseball, fields, and my now favorite Brewers at Milwaukee County Stadium and Miller Park, this year aptly known for the first time as American Family Field.