My first major league ball game was
at the SkyDome. The Jays were on the cusp of their dominating run (Eastern
Division champs in '91, World Series wins in '92 and '93). Our seats were
terrible. We were in the upper deck and
behind a huge pillar. My mom had a quick chat with an usher and we were
able to move up a dozen rows to where we could see everything and more
comfortably nose bleed.
Toronto lost that game,
but man did they look good. Juan
Guzman pitched six solid
innings, John Olerud and Greg
Myers homered, Devon White homered and stole two bases! Bullpen pitching and some Brewer
comeback luck lured the W away from the home team. Yet, the Blue Jays still looked good! Those bright big
league lights! Those blue team colors! That grass was the greenest
I'd ever seen. THE JUMBOTRON!!! So cool. And of course, the
official scorebook!
The book breaks
down into three main parts: Articles on the Toronto players, “fan services”
that give you things like a map of the SkyDome and info on purchasing tickets,
and advertisements.
The articles are
a cool read. Due to the whole book being solely about the Jays, it wasn't just
the all-stars that got some ink. Tom Candiotti and his knucklball get a feature, as
do hopeful up-and-comers Mark Whiten and Glenallen
Hill. Closers Duane Ward and Tom
Henke get the cover story. Remember
this is back in '91, when writers were still getting fresh mileage on the topic
of relief pitching and specialized bullpens. There's even a few Zisk-worthy stories. One is about
two fans doing the stadium-tour trek. Another is a delightful piece about
the time Kenny Williams almost stole third, ran back to
second, and thanks to two consecutive errors by the Yankees, ran back to third,
crashing into and steamrolling John Mclaren (Toronto's third base case coach), and
eventually made it to home plate.
The fan
services pages break up the action a bit, giving us some pertinent info like
team rosters and stadium information, as well as plugs for whatever the
Blue Jays want to sell to tourists and season-ticket holders. The worst page is
the club directory, which lists and pictures administration people, a.k.a. old
white dudes in bad suits.
The
advertisements are typical of the era, and all blatantly shout "Middle-class male
ages 27-52, buy me!" Cars lead the way, followed by cameras (remember
those?), alcohol, TVs, and power tools. But aside from your basic
nostalgia, I love how most of the ads have a baseball slant. It’s not just
a Honda Accord, it’s a vehicle with “enough room for a 7th inning
stretch. Mitsubishi TVs will give you the home advantage. And of
course we all remember the Rolaid's Relief Man of the Year, right? It doesn't
matter what it is—money management, bus companies, batteries, those mad men
find a way!
At 192 pages, it filled
whatever time wasn't spent being awestruck at the sight of Mookie Wilson's back. And
now, yikes, 27 years later, it was a nice trip down memory lane. Usually
I come across old paperback baseball books, enjoy them for a short while, and
donate them back to the dollar bins. I'm holding on to this one.
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