Further to my comments on baseball in Chapter 10, I had the most amazing baseball trip in the mid-1950’s…

In August of 1957 Morris Deveson and Glen Arnott and I drove to the U.S. to take in some major league baseball games. Morris and Glen, like me, were Agricultural Representatives with the Manitoba Department of Agriculture (Hamiota and Boissevain, respectively). We were all single guys. They picked me up in Holland, MB, where I was the Ag. Rep. and we headed south.

I think the first game was in St. Paul, Minnesota – a Triple A game and for some reason one of the best-played ones we witnessed during the 2 weeks we were away. Other teams we saw play – all Major League teams – included the New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Red Sox and the Milwaukee Braves. Maybe there were others.

Morris and Glen kept notes all the time; I was less interested in statistics, but we had a great time.

A couple of highlights – with the legendary Yankee slugger Mickey Mantle coming to bat in a game against Chicago, I should NEVER have gone to the concession stand for a hot dog. When I returned to my seat, Mantle was trotting in from 3rd base having just hit a home run!

In Cincinnati at an afternoon game with the temperature hovering around 100 degrees (remember, it was 1957 so we still used Fahrenheit) we watched left-handed pitcher Warren Spahn warm up in front of us, throwing hard to his catcher for at least 10 minutes. Then he went out and pitched the entire game – and batted, too! They don’t make pitchers like that anymore.