When did you first know that you were hooked on baseball?

[VOX]

It can sneak up on you, or it can come in a flash. My experience was a little bit of both.

As a kid, I enjoyed playing ball at the park in summer, collecting the cards, watching games on TV -- the usual stuff. But my epiphany occurred in the summer of 1961. My dad got tickets to see the newly-formed Angels take on the White Sox at the friendly confines of Los Angeles' creaky old Wrigley Field (built in 1925).

I was speechless -- we were sitting incredibly **close** to the players -- they had faces! Luis Aparicio, taking a time-out while standing on third base, put a stick of chewing gum into his mouth; the tinfoil wrapper glinted in the lights as he wadded it up into his hip pocket. The outfielders left footprints on the dew-covered grass as they jogged in to bat. Man, this was baseball!

From that point forward, I was hooked on the game, hopelessly, and for all time.

[kaitykaity]

1. A flash.

I didn't even like baseball, but my Dad did, so I took
him to a Mariner game at the King Dome. That was '94,
the lock-out year. There was maybe 15,000 people there,
we could sit wherever we wanted. I had a blast.

We lost 10-2, but Mike Blowers hit two solo home runs,
and when I got home, all of a sudden I had the radio
on every day, listening to a ball game.

[Jersey Devil]

2. After my first game - Polo Grounds 1955, dblheader with Cards, Willie

Musial, both hit home runs, I was hooked.

[JohnKleeb]

3. When I was like 4-5

I played T-Ball and for the first and only time ever, my dad was an assistant coach. It didnt hurt that the coach was the dad of one of my best friends at the time, funnily enough, his dad now coaches football at a high school, my dad went to before he moved more closer to where we live now.

[KitchenWitch]

4. I went to a some games as a child

But I did not get totally hooked until the 1987 season which culminated in the Minnesota Twins winning the World Series. I was able to attend on e of the late season games and the excitement was palpable/almost visible. At the time you probably could have considered me a band wagon fan, but I continued to be a fan ever since.

[GOPFighter]

5. Beautifully said, KrazyKat

I've never given the genesis of my love of baseball any thought. I remember sitting in my Grandfather's '51 Ford listening to White Sox games, collecting baseball cards as a kid, and most of all devouring box scores in the newspapers. What a blast to find out how easy it was to compute batting averages, ERAs. Baseball statistics fascinated me. They still do.

[Princess Turandot]

6. when I was 10 or so, my Aunt & Uncle moved into the apartment building..

that we lived in. They were far saner than my parents so I used to spend a lot of time in their apartment. They loved baseball and watched all of the televised games; my uncle was a Yankee fan and my Aunt was a Mets fan. (For reasons now unclear to me, she loved Ed Kranepool lol.) That was how I became interested in it. My aunt took me to my first game, at Shea Stadium. I was very fond of her; she died 25 years ago, and there's an aspect to my interest in baseball which I imagine is connected to that.

[bunkerbuster1]

7. Hooked for good?

I'd played Little League, idolized Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and the '67 Cardinals, but almost completely lost interest in MLB in the early 70s.

I wasn't hooked until some friends took my wife and I out to a ballgame at Shea in 1989. I'd forgotten how much fun it was to see a live game in person, and we've been huge fans ever since.

[Steel City Slim]

8. My First Game

I was about 11 or 12 when I went to my first ballgame. It was at Forbes Field. The huge expanse of green grass, the poetry that is baseball---I was hooked for life.

[Maestro]

9. 1974

My first little league game. I have been in love ever since. Plus the history of it just keeps me coming back. I am totally obsessed with my Texas Rangers. We've got some good kids who seem to really enjoy playing.

[Neecy]

10. The Summer of '69

So, I'm dating myself...but while I was growing up in Chicago, my dad used to take me to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs. That place was, and still is, completely magical. Best of all, I got to witness first hand the Cubbies in the heartbreak season of 1969 - I can still name the entire roster, although I was a little kid at the time.

For some weird reason, I'm not a big Cubs fan any longer - I moved to California and started following the A's - but that summer at Wrigley got me hooked for life on baseball.