[Kevvyg1026]

Thanks for your post. It brought some childhood memories flooding back.

I started collecting baseball cards in 1965 when I was nine years old and living in Corpus Christi, Tx. My stimuli for doing so were two-fold; I was getting an allowance for mowing the lawn so I could afford the nickel packs, but more importantly, my step-dad decided to take me to my first professional baseball games, an exhibition series that pitted the Yankees-Astros (3 games) and the Orioles-Astros (2 games). These series were staged April 9 to April 11, 1965 and represented the debut of the newly constructed Astrodome.

We made the three-hour trek from Corpus to Houston on Friday afternoon. As we neared Houston, I saw traffic as dense as I had ever witnessed. I recall being quite nervous, fervently hoping that we wouldn’t be late to the game. Irrespective of whether my recollections are due to my memory being faulty, or those feeling of anxiousness were due to the anticipation of seeing my first game, the drive seemed interminable.

But we made it and witnessed Game 1 on Friday night (Yankees-Astros) and Game 2 on Saturday afternoon (Orioles-Astros) before heading home. Our seats were in the bleachers, but to an impressionable boy, it didn’t matter. The size of the crowd, the excitement in the air, and the overall size of the Astrodome were wondrous. Although the Yankees lost the game (in 12 innings), seeing my childhood idol (Mantle) get the first hit (single in 1st inning) and the first home run (6th inning) in the Astrodome were surreal bonuses.