Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Opening Day - 2011

Rich Galen

Friday April 1, 2011

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OPENING NOTE: This MULLINGS was originally published in April 2005 following the first Washington Nationals game at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC.

It is one of my favorites.

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On September 6, 1995 I flew to Austin, Texas to watch a baseball game on TV with The Lad who was then an undergrad at the University of Texas. The occasion was Cal Ripken's 2,131st consecutive Major League baseball game, breaking Lou Gehrig's record; a record which had been considered "unbreakable."

Baseball has been a bond between The Lad and me.

When he played Little League I rarely missed a game. In McLean, Virginia it was not at all unusual to be leaning on the centerfield fence with the head of the President's Domestic Policy Council on one side and a US Senator on the other, discussing the most important issue of the day: Shouldn't the shortstop (who was maybe 11-years-old) be playing a couple of steps toward second base with a left-handed batter up?

Over the years the Lad and I had gone to many baseball games in Baltimore to watch the Orioles. One night we decided to go to a game against the Yankees and the only seats left were, literally, above the stadium lights.

Below us, there were flying animals drawn by the lights. The Lad asked if they were birds or bats. "Bats," I said. "But a very special kind of bats; baseball bats." Which still ranks as the best father-to-son pun of all time.

We had wanted to be together the night that Ripken broke Gehrig's record. We had dinner in Austin, went to my hotel room, ordered every dessert on the menu from room service, and sobbed in concert as, at the end of the fifth inning - making it a regulation game - Cal took a lap around the stadium, slapping hands, in acknowledgment of the fact that the fans would not let the game re-start until he had done so.

Some 13 years have gone by. The Lad has gone from being a college student, to being a member of the President's staff, to making his own, highly successful way, in business and politics.

In 2005, after 34 years, baseball came home to Washington. According to the Washington Post, in the years since the departure of Major League baseball to last night the population of the region doubled from less than three million to around six million; ticket prices went from top price of $6 to a top of $300 and gasoline has gone from 36� per gallon to well over three dollars.

At 6:52 AM, the morning of the Nationals' first game - exactly 12 hours before President George W. Bush was scheduled to throw out the first pitch - The Lad came through the arrival doors at Dulles airport, returning the favor of my flight to Austin for a baseball game a decade earlier.

At 7:05 PM the first pitch was thrown by a Major Leaguer to a Major Leaguer in a real game in Washington, DC.

Fathers and sons - parents and kids - have been going to baseball games for over a hundred years. This father and this son have been blessed to have shared unique opportunities over the course of our 30+ years together.

That Opening Day was one of them.

That year, we sat along the first base line and watched a ballgame together. Ate hotdogs. Worried over defensive alignments. Ducked foul balls. And went home happy.

Baseball has been a continuing thread in our relationship, The Lad and I.

On Opening Day in 2008, The Lad was in California so I sat in the press box at Nats' Park. The game ended on a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning by Nats third baseman Ryan Zimmerman who was, and still is, the face of this franchise.

While I was in the interview room waiting for the post-game press conference with then-manager Manny Acta, The Lad sent me a text message which read:

Walk off! Go Zim!

Zimmerman, who in a little over two years in the majors had stroked four walk-off homers, came to the interview room after his manager had finished. He was asked if this was his most thrilling walk-off home run.

"No," he said. "The first one was. It was on Father's Day and my dad was in the stands."

See what I mean?

Fathers and sons and baseball. Life might get better than that, but it doesn't have to get much better.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: The Mullfoto from that first game at RFK Stadium in 2005; and a photo from yesterday's opening day game.

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