How Baseball Marks the Time: The seasons change. Children grow up. Years fly by. Yet somehow you can still remember exactly where you were when the ball cleared the wall. (Mark Hertling, 8/17/26, The Bulwark)
I’ve been a Cardinals fan since I was a boy, and when I think about my life, I can mark parts of it by home runs.
I was listening on KMOX radio as a boy of 11 in 1964 when Ken Boyer hit his grand slam against the Yankees in Game 4 of the World Series, turning a 3–0 deficit into a 4–3 Cardinals victory. Three years later, Bob Gibson—my boyhood hero—did something that somehow seemed perfectly normal for Bob Gibson: He pitched a complete-game victory in Game 7 of the World Series at Fenway Park, struck out ten, and hit a home run, too.
By 1982, I was an Army officer, married with children, when rookie Willie McGee hit two home runs in Game 3 of the World Series—and robbed Milwaukee’s Gorman Thomas of one. Baseball had marked the time.