Sept 1973. The only time I went to a game with my mother AND father. He didn't like sports. She was an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I just turned 12 and got the tickets as a b'day present. Little did I know at the time, but it was the last game at the old stadium. We lost to Detroit. Fans everywhere were taking whatever they could home with them. I still have two blue planks from the seat I sat in. I most vividly remember my old man, recognizing that it was a kind of out-of-control atmosphere, took me on the field. I stood in dead center, right i/f/o the monuments and looked up. As a kid, I was in awe; the size of the field, the view of the stadium from that vantage-point, being surrounded, almost enveloped, by the facade (the closest thing is being on the Maid of the Mist boat when it enters the horseshoe falls in Niagra). I thought of DiMaggio and Mantle. Real cool.
By the way, my folks soon split up after that game. But my dad did start taking me to games at Shea while the Yanks played there. AND, in 76, we were at the game where Chambliss hit a come-from-behind, game-winning walk-off HR off of Tom House and beat Boston. Again, little did I know what other walk-off he'd later hit against KC in the ALCS.
