It began with a lemonade stand and a stereo.
In my Fathers Day post I mentioned that my parents moved the family back to Chicago in the late 90’s after living in Mississippi for approximately three years. The first summer after we moved back to Chicago dad told me he wanted me to spend more time outside and not playing video games all day every day. The problem with that was I did not have any friends I could play in the park with!
This caused me to ask my mom if she’d help me start a lemonade stand. She agreed to help me with the lemonade stand and suggested that I listen to the radio while selling lemonade to keep myself from getting board. I was not really one to listen to talk radio though and was not really into music yet so being from Chicago’s south side she suggested that I listen to White Sox games. This means I spent the first part of Summer in 1997 selling lemonade and listing to the second place White Sox play their games. Fast forward to Fourth of July since we lived in Lakeview (two miles from Wrigley Field) and my mom listened to the Steve Cochran show on WGN every morning I asked her to leave the stereo on WGN for me so I could listen to the Cubs game. Although she was chuckling she did as I asked. That summer came and went with me learning a lot about baseball through listening to games while selling lemonade! I was not what I would call a baseball fan yet though.
I became a fan thanks to the infamous home run race during the 1998 season. How, you ask. Well one day early in the Baseball season Dennis (the man in the picture) stopped in my parents office asking if they wanted to advertise in his free program that he handed out before Cubs games. My parents would end up advertising in the program and offered him a desk in their office for me to help with inserting last minute advertisement inserts into the program. One thing does not always lead to another. In this case however that led to me helping Dennis on day games outside Wrigley and sometimes going to the game after we were done passing out the programs! By the end of that summer Dennis and his family had become family friends, I had gone to many Cubs games and also fell in love with the Cubs! I was officially a baseball fan!
With that… I have to thank my dad for turning me into a baseball fan!