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Winter finally released its grip from Chicago this week, giving me the occassion to peel the fleece lining out of my heavy coat to convert it into a spring jacket. This uncovered a hidden pocket inside the lapel of the outer shell, inside which I found the remains of the ticket stub from a Chicago Cubs game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley Field on April 29, 2006. It was torn in four places: one, along the perforated line that the ushers rip when you enter the ballpark, and three less exact gashes through the top half that looked like they were caused by absent-minded handling or the trauma of several spin cycles.
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This week, an article about Bo Jackson by Joe Posnanski from the Kansas City Star has been making the rounds on the sports blogs. He notes that it’s been 20 years (20 years!) since Bo was a rookie, which makes me feel both incredibly old and gives me a nostalgic lump in my throat. Like every other 10-year-old baseball fan of that era, I worshipped Bo, putting him on a pedestal right next to my other favorites, Don Mattingly and Ozzie Smith. My love for Donnie Baseball and Ozzie was based on logic. Mattingly was from my hometown, a left-handed first baseman who was the one baseball player I always tried to emulate. Ozzie was the most popular player on my favorite team, the Cardinals, and I doubt that any kid who grew up listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call Cards games on the radio would have picked anyone else. But for Bo Jackson, it was different. I didn’t give a whit for the Royals; in fact, they provided my first taste of true sports agony when the beat the Cardinals in the 1985 World Series. I had never followed Bo’s Heisman-winning football exploits at Auburn. I had probably never heard of him until I saw his first baseball card in the 1986 Topps Traded/Rookies set. But once I started to see and hear about the things he could do on the baseball field, I didn’t have any choice but to want to see more.
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