UNCLE ELMER DIDN'T GET IT:

For reasons I never knew and have remained murky ever since in my family, it was my silent calm dignified utterly-uninterested-in-sports Uncle Elmer who took me to my first professional baseball game, the New York Mets v. the Houston Astros, in October of 1966. Perhaps he was given free tickets, and the sudden impulse to coddle a nephew came upon him. Or maybe he had received free tickets and could not find anyone to give them to, and being a man who disliked wasting money, decided that he might as well turn them into a pleasant afternoon in the roomy confines of William Shea Stadium, where the Mets were finishing an awful season, and there might have been 5,000 fans total if you counted everyone twice, and we could sit wherever we wanted, so we did.

I remember clutching my ticket, memorizing the section and row and seat number as I started climbing to the rafters, when my uncle, the soul of equable grace, murmured something to the usher, who laughed and waved his arm grandly over the sea of empty seats, and said, Be my guest, sir, and my uncle and I made our way down to the box seats near the glowing field.

I was nine years old and knew little of baseball, and less about the Mets and their already tumultuous history, but I knew that this was the Major Leagues, and these men before us were professionals, and the stadium was vast and imposing, and I could have a hot dog, though I could not have peanuts, since, as Uncle Elmer said, "the way people eat peanuts here and just drop the detritus on the floor is poor manners." 

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