In 1958, my mother took me to see my first Major League Baseball game in the L.A. Coliseum. The Dodgers had just moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn. We played the then New York Giants before they moved to San Francisco. I fell in love with the game, even though the Coliseum was a dreadful place to watch baseball. It didn’t matter. I was a kid and wild to be in a place to see a live game. At the time, I didn’t know that Mom was a secret fan. She never let on that she liked sports of any kind. That was long before she became B-ball Mommy and studied the teams in March Madness. (See blog post on March 20, 2024)

Mom gave me a small transistor radio so that I could listen in the afternoon to that voice that taught me so much about baseball—Vin Scully. He was the voice of the Dodgers throughout my youth and well into adulthood. He’d call a game with enthusiasm but never with the wild abandon of other broadcasters. I liked it best when he explained what happened on the field in such a way that I could see it. I was with him during the Walter Alston years, the Lasorda years. I learned about the different pitching styles of Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. I learned why Sandy Koufax refused to play in game one of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. From Don Sutton through PeeWee Reese to Duke Snyder, I lived for the games after school. I liked Steve Garvey back when he was younger and cute and before he started running for the Senate from California. Spoiler: he’s neither young nor cute anymore.

Mom and I didn’t have much money in those days, but seats in both the Coliseum and later in Dodger Stadium were reasonable. I ate my first Dodger dog when Dodger Stadium opened in 1962. It’s still the best stadium hotdog I ever ate. I didn’t realize at the time what it took to build the stadium, how people who lived in Chavez Ravine were uprooted. I didn’t know that the U.S. government had paid over $4M for the land with plans in place to build affordable housing. Those plans were scrapped and the mostly Hispanic residents were forced to leave their homes and businesses. I was too young to know. When I learned about the Battle of Chavez Ravine, I was horrified. One of the many dark moments in history that has pretty much been as buried as surely as the original houses were.

Years later, I was lucky to share a block of eight season tickets with a group of friends. Each of us had two tickets and got to pick our dates. I was able to repay all the love Mom gave me when we went to early baseball games. I took her to a lot over the course of my season tickets. We had as much fun when I was an adult as when I was a kid. If you ask my husband, he’ll tell you that I bleed Dodger blue to this day.

No matter the dark moments in Dodger history, no matter the years when we didn’t go to the World Series, no matter who went to the Hall of Fame, I loved listening to Vin Scully, talking with Mom about the Dodgers, and cheering on my blue and white team. Both Vin and Mom are gone now. I know Mom’s in heaven trying to get the last word with the “Voice of the Dodgers.” She just might win that battle.

The longer I live, the more I realize how many secrets Mom had. I wonder what I’ll discover next.