Stop to think about the first bird you saw which may have triggered your birding hobby or in my case a full blown- totally overwhelmingly lovely addiction. I'll have to think when birding went beyond fun to I can't live without doing things with birds all day every day. It has been a long time ago. I think it was during a really painful period. Hmmm....
But the ideas for this post came with a particular rememberence of my other passion - that for Cardinal baseball. This memory was of a moment with my son- then 9 years old. Danny Cox was pitching for the Redbirds and Josh and I were so excited. The Cardinals won and I recall the feeling of hugging my son with the vibration of thousands of exuberant voices at the final out. This was the first World Series I had been to since Game 7 of the 1968 epic series with the Detroit Tigers. Bob Gibson. That did not end so well but the reversal of those sad memories were being overwritten by a strong positive outcome.
The memory of that total thrill was triggered by seeing the articles in the St. Louis Post on line at stltoday.com/sports about manager Whitey Herzog. Whitey is being inducted into the Hall of fame in Cooperstown this coming weekend. I've now missed two induction ceremonies. Once, I drove over 2,196 miles from Montana to participate as a fan in the induction of one of my true heroes -Ozzie Smith. Ozzie had taken a few moments to go out of his way to show kindness to my family one hot St.Louis afternoon when we spotted him and his then very young son at a game. Heather, Josh and I had retrieved our stuff and were leaving when we realized that my binoculars were not with us. We retreated rapidly to our seats where under the accumulated Bratwurst wrappers and other debris, the pair of 8.5x 42 Swift Audubons were still safe. Checking for other stuff possibly left behind took only a second or two more and Josh had a ball we had caught firmly in his hand. So we finally began our exit from Busch Stadium II.
We reached one of the large common areas when suddenly Ozzie appeared. He literally asked us how the game was and whether we had a good time. Then taking the ball from Josh he autographed it -without any quibble or anything other than the shear joy of being the generous human he is.
But my greatest tearful thrill was that Game 5 victory when Josh and I shared with 55,000 other baseball crazed Cardinal fans. It is one of those very special father and son moments I will never forget.
