From the Late Mr. Harootunian

OK, I’m finally back home from Philly, after 3 weeks of deep immersion at the Wharton School of Business at the UPenn. For those of you who don’t know, I started a new job, representing Wharton here in SF. Great job, great school, and an awesome brick office—the old Folger’s Coffee Factory on Howard and Main—stumbling distance to our Downtown Ballyard. As Noel says: “Life is Good!”

Spending 3 weeks in Philly can do strange things to a person. I have accordingly stockpiled as many Phillie hitter as I can find (4!) on my roster, including a rejuvinated Endy Chavez with a new lease (or is it leash) on life, and am ready to dive back into the world of BABI!
Fortunately, I was away for the bulk of the Giants no-closer-by-committee melodrama. $32 for Tyler Sky Walker....no comment.

I dumped Christensen back into the waiver pool this morning, as 3 games in Colorado this week is just too scary...especially after running through the Colorado bullpen earlier this year, like I did last year with the woeful AZ bullpen, chasing that phantom called “Closer” and blowing up my ERA and Ratio along the way. Witasick might just be the guy in CO, as Fuentes is mere a lefty, and being a lefty myself, if your name ain’t Wagner, it just ain’t happening in the 9th against all those right handed biffers. But, remember, you can’t spell Witasick with out the last four letters...so Fuentes is probably good for a stretch of away games for a while.

OK, per Pooba’s request, my first baseball game.

I grew up in No. NJ, and Dad was a Giants fan with stories of Ott and Hubbell from his childhood still fresh in my mind. In fact, he remembers Hubbell walking past his store in NY one day in the early 1960’s, with his left arm a good hand longer than his right arm. Dad presumed it was from all those screw-jies he threw in his regular 131+ pitch outings, every 4th day, over his 15-20 years in the Bigs.

S0 my first game was a Giants game at Shea. Back before expansion and interleague play, there was two 3-game series per visiting team per year, and I could always count on the Giants coming to town around the 4th week of May, and the second week of August. In fact, through the Mitchell/Clark/Williams years in the late 80’s, those dates still stuck in my mind each year, so you didn’t schedule anything else, ‘cause there were only 6 times a year to see the Giants, and as a rabid fan, I would not consider missing any of the 6 each year.

Why was I a Giants fan? Well, the easy answer is that Dad was. But, there was one other BIG reason for it. At my first baseball game ever, on May 22, 1969, as a 9 year old, I got to sit near first base and watched #44 practice his craft. He was tall, and I was tall (for my age); he was left handed, and I was left handed. He played first base (I first referred to him as Scoop—not Stretch, by the way he played), and I played first base in Tiny Tim. That’s where the similarities ended, but 3 out of 5 ain’t bad... .

So, it wasn’t hard to identify with the player with the name “McCovey” on his back. His last name alone was almost as cool as his confident demeanor and the way he fielded his position.
But, of course, he could swing the stick, too. On 5/22/69, he hit a mamouth home run that was so high up near the right field foul pole, and so far, that it certainly must have left the ballyard, and headed to the only thing bigger than the man himself—the huge metal globe from the nearby World’s Fair grounds.

I don’t remember who actually won the game, and while my Dad kept telling me to watch Mays in Center, #24’s best days were behind him, and he certainly was not as impressive as #44 on that day, . McCovey was a true “Giant” in the literal sense of the word, especially to an aspiring 9 year old.

But what I do remember quite clearly is our trip to the game, as it was not just Dad and me in the car, but 5 of my best buddies coming with us, because 5/22 was my birthday, and in our neighborhood, Dads took the kids to the ballyard on birthdays, and everyone had a good time (and in my case, I was fortunate, because I could tell that even Dad was having a good time with all of us, despite the hassles of trying to keep us in line for 9 innings).

Of course, Dad, being a Bronx native, had to impart a lot of advice for us 9-year olds, about the dangers of the City (by the way, there’s only one “City” for you native San Franciscans). As we were driving into the game, he was imploring us to use the buddy system (without calling it that, of course), and also told us to stick close together, and keep him in sight at all times. All perfectly reasonable to us—nothing we hadn’t heard before on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History.

Then, he couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to offer one additional piece of advice to us all. He said: “Boys there are pickpockets out there, and they will try to steal your wallets out of your back pockets. So put your wallets in your front pockets and keep you money by your balls.” There was a 1.5 second lag and dead silence, and then all of my friends, in unison, burst out in laughter, saying: “Keep you money by your balls”—Mr. Harootunian said ‘Balls”!!). Pretty racy stuff for 9 year olds to hear, especially from an adult...especially from a DAD!

I’m sure Dad got some “feedback” from some of my friends’ parents the next day, as none of us could ever forget the “balls” reference. I certainly can’t.

Dad still lives in the same house in No. NJ. He’ll be 80 next year, and still roots for the Giants. He came out to SF for Opening Day of the Ballyard in 2000, and we had a great time together—a major highlight of my adult years. I’m really lucky to have had such a good friend for these 45 years. Thanks Dad, for the great memories, then and now.