50 years since my first Cubs game!

Also had to be ‘61 with my father and brother….don’t remember much at all although the Cubs were playing the Milwaukee Braves. I’ll have to go look up possible series in baseball-reference. Don’t think I can pin point exactly, but must have been summer months…I remember a box seat, and it was warm….

I was six years old and Ernie Banks hit 3 homeruns in a losing effort against the Dodgers. Didn’t see any of the homeruns because everytime he hit one everyone stood up and I couldn’t see anything.

We sat in the upper deck in the last row on the third base side which my mom liked because of the cool breeze that came through there.

I was in a Catholic day camp near my house and the Cubs won something like 11-3 over the Giants, but I got sick and a priest had to take me home early. It would somewhere around 68 or 69 by 71 I already walking to games on my own.

the collapse had begun a week earlier, and they stayed in 1st for 12 more days. The hurting came real soon, and decades more to follow. That November I saw my first Bears game at Wrigley.

A local Barber shop sponsored a bus trip into Chicago from my home in Iowa. Cubs won 4-3 behind Rick Reushel and a 7th inning 2-run HR by Rick Monday. We sat in the LF upper deck. I was fortunate to witness Hank Aaron set a new all-time career HR record by hitting no. 725 into the LF bleachers. I owned the ultimate bragging rights for 20-days until Hank hit no. 726. Oh well..

Box Score:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN197407070.shtml

I have no idea when my first game was. I was more into Barbie, Wacky Packages and flipping cartwheels when I was a kid. I’m guessing mid-70’s because what I do remember is going early for batting practice and trying to get players to sign my scorecard. Steve Swisher was always obliging. I have an S for my initial so for years I would sign my S’s like his. He was probably my first crush. I’ve had a favoritism towards catchers ever since.

Also remember that my mom would pack a picnic lunch with kool-aid in one of those big ole thermos bottles with the spout. Then my brother would get me to flip the seats with him at the end of the games for free tickets…somehow he always got those tickets. I really didn’t care at the time, so he’d take them and go with a friend, but now that I think about it…hey… he owes me some tickets….

I also celebrated my first game in 1961. It was on April 26th. Popeye hit a walkoff in the 10th & I was hooked for life. I remember it was quite chily, and there were many empty seats. Fans in those days would raise the seat next to them up and down making noise in hopes of touching off a rally. I actually remember the first game I watched all the way through on WGN was in August of 1960. Don’t remember the date, but I do recall Glen Hobbie hitting a walk-off in the bottom of the 9th to beat the eventual WS champs.

VK: You don’t know how lucky you were. This must have been a miracle game. When I was playing pony leage and high school in ’61 we used to call any poor at bat by a left handed hitter a “Bouchee.”

On the other hand, maybe it was one of those moments of grace before the inevitable fall. Kind of like what I expereinced in ‘69 when I was at Wrigley for Kenny Holtman’s no-no against the Braves, only then to suffer thorugh the Cubs notorious collapse almost immediately afterwards.

They probably should have moved Banks to first earlier than they did, by that time he wasn’t much of a shortstop and they wouldn’t have been losing much hitting.
My friend’s FIRST GAME was the Holtzman no-hitter. I was so jealous. I didn’t see one until last year, when I saw Dallas Braden’s perfect game. You just have to keep going to games and eventually the odds will favor you.

but I know for sure I was at this one with my family. I was just 5 years old, but remember thinking, I bet this team (Cards) wins the World Series… which of course, they did.

My recollection is going to a game with my big sister (then and now a big fan), where the Cubs won 1-0 on a Banks HR. But I haven’t found a boxscore/retrosheet to support that.

saw the Cubs drop two to the Giants at Candlestick

Two of my more memorable visits as a kid, were a twinbill in July 1963 with the Cards. My mom & I had to take standing room, but a kind gentleman in the boxes let us use his seat cushions to sit on the concrete in the grandstand seating area. It was all worth it, as the Cubs swept. Ironically, saw Lou Brock hit a monster homer against Ernie Broglio that day. Also saw a twinbill with the Mets in 1962. Cubs nearly lost both ends, but Ernie Banks hit a two-out three run dinger to send game 2 into extras. They won in 11 or 12.