Blame it on Mattingly

Posted: August 10th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Blame it on Mattingly

Recently I was asked to write a couple hundred words about something non-work related that I’m passionate about.  For someone like me who considers digital marketing both my career and my hobby, this was a welcome challenge, and I figured I’d share it here as well.


Don Mattingly Topps Baseball Card

Baseball in the desert?

A lot of folks ask me how it is that growing up in Phoenix I turned out to be a Yankees fan.

For years, anyone else who grew up in Phoenix wondered why someone would like baseball at all before the D-Backs came along, and since the 2001 World Series, it’s been viewed as a near betrayal to not be a fan of the home team. (Except of course for the huge amount of Dodgers or Cubs fans who relocated to the Valley.)

Admittedly, though, Phoenix sometimes feels like the Fair Weather Fan capital, and it’s tough to believe anyone who says they’re a D-Backs fan from May thru September.

Summer of ’91

The real story starts in 1991, when I was 9 years old and went to spend summer break with my Grandma and Aunt and Uncles in Toledo.  That summer they took me to my first baseball game, to watch the Toledo Mudhens.

Admittedly I was most immediately enthralled with the peripheral stuff, the souvenir batting helmet and bag of Big League Chew I got, and I still remember getting really antsy in the seat around the 6th inning.  The clincher though, the thing that made me a fan for life, was the pack of baseball cards my Aunt bought me on the way home.  I tossed aside the stale bit of chewing gum and right there on top, Donnie Baseball himself.

A couple days later, the Yankees were on tv and I was hooked. Even once summer ended, the Yankees were the team most often on national tv, I could spot the guy that was on my baseball card.  That afternoon kicked off several years of card collecting (until game memorabilia cards blew up the hobby), and a life-time of loving baseball.

I’ve been a supporter ever since.

 


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