Take Me Out of the Ball Game

 

It is two locations, but only one place. My baseball journey began in the Summer of 1983, when every kid in attendance at Jack Murphy Stadium received a free bat. Tony Gwynn and Pete Rose on the same field, at the same time. Still learning the game, I listened intently when the adults talked. Names of old came up; Mays & Aaron, Maris and Mantle. Current names like Ryan and Jackson. The game only lasted nine innings, but there was one constant, something that felt it was always there and always would be.

Beer.

My brother Joe and I in the parking lot, trying to drink our Pepsi’s like the men were drinking the Budweiser’s. Crushing the can and burping loudly before tossing another fallen soldier into the back of the rusted-out Ford Ranchero. The Padres won 5-4. A little tired and worse for wear but having no desire to go home, the party moved back out into the parking lot after the final out.

Thirteen years later I go to my first game as an “adult”, meaning I paid for my own ticket and parking. Ditto the cooler full of beer. The constant.

Beer.

My Uncle Ron worked concessions, so the beer flowed as freely as the breeze on those warm summer nights in Mission Valley. I needed only to buy one beer, then keep going back for free refills. After the game I carry on the tradition I first became part of in 1983, the postgame tailgate party. Open the cooler back up, relight the grill. I could fill the cooler with the same amount of money it takes to buy a postgame beer or two in the Gaslamp now. Back then, Uncle Ron would clock out and bring his coworkers for some merriment. Before that season ends, I have no shortage of concessions employees willing to refill my cup.

With beer.

Baseball was only from April to October, so the only real constant in my life was alcohol. I simply drank more and paid less for it in the Spring and Summer months. Suddenly, my sometimes legendary in-game alcohol intake is eliminated completely. I’m working there now, escorting the National Anthem singer down to the field, overseeing fan contests, and rallying the crowd. I take a lot of baseball lessons to heart; I leave it all on the field. I end each game exhausted, confident I gave all I could. Then I head straight to the bar, hitting a few postgame parties on the way out of the parking lot.

The nights are long, the years short. One night a fan asked me what I do in the offseason. I reply “Drink”. Waiting for spring training. I don’t look forward to Christmas, I don’t give a rat’s ass about New Years Eve. Us alkies call it “Amateur Night”. Opening Day is my only holiday. I figure it this way, it’s the only one left our culture really celebrates for the reason, the rest of them we celebrate just for the celebration. The only difference is the way we dress and the decorations we hang up.

Opening Week and I’m on a bender. But I maintain. I’m nothing like my dad. I don’t cuss and scream. I don’t start fights. I don’t get DUI’s. I can handle my alcohol. Even the guy who runs the liquor store nearest the stadium thinks so. Why else would he come over to McGregors’, on a night he’s closing early, to bring me a six pack of tallboys and say “Just pay me tomorrow”? At McGregor’s, “last call” means go next door and get a sixer so I can keep drinking when I get home. On any day of the week. Once the game is over, my only responsibility is to finish all my beer like a good boy.

I work hard, I party harder. At any given moment, I’m working more than one job. Going three and four month stretches without a day off. One time I was told that working for the Padres wasn’t a real job. I reply “Don’t tell Larry Lucchino that, ‘cuz he sends me a paycheck every two weeks for doing it.” A week later, the same ones criticizing me for working a job I love are bragging about me, I’m their ticket connection. Go figure.

I move closer to my thirties, A Ballpark for San Diego is almost complete. By this time, I know every concessionaire in the stadium. On the rare day off I’ll take in no less than ten drinks in the parking lot. I’m nearly seeing double by the time the first pitch is thrown. The 7^th inning brings the first “last call” of the night. I choose a seat near my favorite stand. There’s no less than six full beers under my seat. I stand next to the tap, slugging down the last one as the last out of the 7^th is recorded. Seconds later I take the two frosty cold ones waiting for me.

More beer

The new Ballpark opens and everything changes. Everyone has to learn the lay of the land. People get lost making their way around our new home, it’s nothing like the Stadium. I’ve studied the blueprints since they became available, I took every opportunity to roam the construction site, so I know the place better than most. The day it opens I’m not concerned with anything other than the score to the game and where to find my postgame drink. I quickly locate my contacts from the Stadium, I devote myself to getting to know the new beer vendors. New home, same goal.

Beer.

I blink, and I have two sons. Every waking moment not on the clock is spent drunk, looking to get drunk or recovering from the last bender. But hey, I’m a known guy. I’m like Norm. Except when I walk through the gates, forty thousand people say “Rudy!”. Yet the writing on the wall becomes clearer. I start enjoying the beer less and less. So that means I enjoy everything else less too. Once I get through the gates, everything is fine. I’m in my universe and it's the only one that exists. But as soon as that last out happens, the depression comes back like a sudden, unexpected steal of home. Then I start expecting it, so that “fine” feeling starts going away in the top of the ninth. Then as soon as we finish singing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”. Even when I take the field to sling goodies to the crowd, the specter weighs on me until finally, not even pulling on the jersey and hearing “Play Ball” is consolation to what I have become outside the Ballpark.

All because of beer.

It all comes to a head in the final weekend of my final season. 8^th inning and I am enraged that the game is running longer than I want it to. I am equal parts sad and furious, the Game is cutting into my drinking time. An old friend, a Marine turned police officer turned retired hippie approaches with his usual smile and comments on how it was rare to see me at that part of the ballpark so late in the game. White knuckled, I give a curt reply and he walks away, perplexed. This sinks me deeper. How could I treat anyone that way, especially Keith?

It doesn’t get better. Yet.

That night I grumble, since I only have enough for a regular six pack, no tall boys. The one semblance of happiness I find that night is four forgotten tallboys in the fridge. Next thing I know, it’s nearing four in the morning and I am out of beer. So I start doing the sensible thing. I start swigging tequila like it was Gatorade. I would have drank more but I passed out at sunrise. Day game a few hours later, and I do what my mind tells me is the responsible thing. I take Harbor Drive into the East Village instead of I-5, because I’m still drunk and figure it’s safer for me and all the other motorists to take surface streets to work.

Because last night it was more than beer.

Two weeks later, I’m digging for change in my car seats to get one more drink. I go to weekend family gatherings to drink for free, coasting in on fumes since I don’t have gas money. I pretend everything is alright, when all I really want to do is take that one-way trip to the Coronado Bridge.

I start to learn. I start writing. I put pen to paper and tell my story. I am horrified at the father I had become. The kid who swore he would never be like his old man started doing just that. As I wrote it was like reading a book about me but written by someone else. One of the big local stories is of a sports hero attempting suicide. He said he fell asleep at the wheel, but a few years later we learned better. I knew something had to change, fast. The next night, I took my last drink. Morning after that, I inform the Padres I would not be returning for a fourteenth season.

No more beer.

Since those days there have been countless moments, moments I lived in sober, and thought to myself “I never would have made it here with a beer in my hand”. Maybe it was fate, maybe it was the Baseball Gods, maybe it was both conspiring for me. In 2024, the year that coincides with the jersey number I wore all those years, I walked into A Ballpark for San Diego yet again. It was a smallish crowd; only the field level seats between the dugouts were available. The rest of the seats were blocked off.

I thought back to that first summer in 1998, when I garnered thousands of signatures to get this place built. I thought of that first game back in 1983, when baseball and partying became as much a part of my existence as breathing. I looked around the mostly empty ballpark, every seat holding a memory; every light illuminating those memories. I thought of how even though every family there now shared a history of the Ballpark, none had a deeper history at Petco Park than my family.

I surged with pride, I surged even stronger with gratitude. But nothing could have prepared me for the high that came next, a high that far surpassed any previous ballgame, concert or combination of the two. It was a high only a parent could know, a sober parent. My baseball life had come full circle when the PA announced “Now batting for Monte Vista High School, number fifty-one, Trevor Gonzales”...