Reflecting on OTD
I’m always asked why I love baseball. There are many reasons, but one of them is the fact that Baseball embraces the history of the sport. It celebrates the players that came before like no other sport. So, maybe with the exception of the White Sox, there is no team that does it better than the Yankees and Old Timers Day. I wasn’t lucky enough or old enough to have seen Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra or even Reggie Jackson play. I was lucky enough to see them be honored, albeit from the upper deck on, Old Timers Day.
A funny story about Reggie. About 15 or 16 years ago my son Ryan and I were invited to Old Timers Day by a friend. We were in awesome seats right behind the Yankee dugout. Our host told Ryan to take his glove down the right field line to see if he could get it signed. He came back 40 minutes later and said “There’s no one signing, except some old guy called Reggie.”
I had a chance to relate this to Reggie and he was moderately amused. Fast forward about three years. Ryan, my daughter Emma and I are in Trenton. We were there mostly to see their awesome mascot Chase, but we ran into Reggie. He makes a comment about Ryan. “Is this the kid who didn’t know who I was?” So, Ryan asked him to sign a ball. As he’s signing the ball, Ryan says”I loved your last movie.” Reggie shot me a are-you-kidding-me look. Ryan the. added “I loved you in Benchwarmers.”
So this year with OTD falling on Fathers Day and Emma being here I didn’t go but Emma and I were invited back to Trenton to be a part of our good friend Andy Freed’s induction into the Trenton Baseball Hall of Fame.