Excellent question!
My own experience has been that I had little interest in baseball till 5th grade. My father coached track and basketball at the highschool, and also little league baseball. My interest was mainly going to the games and playing on the playground stuff. Or a real treat, carrying the equipment bag to the house next door where it was kept. The best thing was dragging the mesh thing around to smooth the infield before the game.
Then I moved to a new town, just in time for the end of the 73 season. Last year for Mays, Aaron chasing the HR record, Ryan striking out pretty much everyone....74 I went to my first Major league ballgame, plus the Hank Aaron specials showed me there were older cards and what they looked like.
77 - moved to another new place. Near Boston, and with a store in town that sold mostly sports memorabilia. Then the 78 Red Sox season, with Fenway right nearby!
It was all timing I suppose, had the first move been a couple years later I probably would have missed the excitement. Had the second move been later or elsewhere I'd have missed more, and without exposure to the hobby.
Would I have eventually picked up some baseball history and become a fan? Probably, dads a big Red Sox fan, and a fan of all sports, so I'd have gotten intersted at some point, but maybe not in the same way. (One of my early memories is of him calling me in to watch figure 8 stock car racing on tv and telling me I'd probably never see it again since it was so crazy and a fading sport)
Everyone has to come to baseball history their own way. Somewhere out there is a kid looking up who this Reggie guy was that hit 3 in a WS game before Pujols, and Ruth? And the other stuff, Matsui he knows, but Molitor?
That's how it begins, and how it continues.
Steve B
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