[Joe Bausch]

The Major League Baseball AllStar game was played that day, and many of my boyhood heroes participated;

 NL All-Stars                  AL All-Stars                       
1. W Mays               CF    1. R Carew              2B
2. H Aaron              RF    2. B Murcer             CF
3. J Torre              3B    3. C Yastrzemski        LF
4. W Stargell           LF    4. F Robinson           RF
5. W McCovey            1B    5. N Cash               1B
6. J Bench              C     6. B Robinson           3B
7. G Beckert            2B    7. B Freehan            C 
8. B Harrelson          SS    8. L Aparicio           SS
9. D Ellis              P     9. V Blue               P 

Reserves (includes players replaced due to injury)
   N Colbert            1B       H Killebrew          1B
   L May                1B       B Powell             1B
   F Millan             2B       C Rojas              2B
   R Santo              3B       B Melton             3B
   M Sanguillen         C        D Duncan             C
   W Davis              CF       R Fosse              C
   B Bonds              OF       T Munson             C
   L Brock              OF       A Otis               CF
   P Rose               OF       D Buford             LF
   R Staub              OF       F Howard             OF
   R Clemente           RF       R Jackson            OF
   D Kessinger          SS       A Kaline             OF
                                 T Oliva              OF
                                 L Cardenas           SS

   S Carlton            P        M Cuellar            P
   C Carroll            P        M Lolich             P
   L Dierker            P        S McDowell           P
   F Jenkins            P        A Messersmith        P
   J Marichal           P        J Palmer             P
   T Seaver             P        M Pattin             P
   D Wilson             P        J Perry              P
   R Wise               P        S Siebert            P
                                 W Wood               P

And my older brother, who introduced me to the game, was at that 1971 All-star game at Tiger Stadium where Reggie Jackson hit a homer off the light fixture on the right field roof.  I think it was off Dock Ellis.

[Pat Brockwell]

I was 10 years old, it was "The Summer of Love", I could ride my bike to Brechtel Park on the west bank of New Orleans.  I was first enthralled by the golf course as a place to have adventures, mostly catching frogs, turtles and snakes.  Enjoyment of the game came a little later, but to this day, I love being at the course, not even having to play.

[Bill_McBride]

Those were the days, Mays, McCovey, Bonds (Bobby not Barry), Marichal...where was Gaylord Perry, he had a great year?

We serious Giant fans have to have long memories! 

[RJ_Daley]

I can't even remember when I was first aware of a golf course and all the magical stuff on the course, like sand bunkers to play in, big oak trees to run about, woods to build forts in, and most important, a place to find golf balls to clean up and resell.  I was lucky enough to grow up with the first tee across our back yard fence of a very modest 9 holer called Burr Oaks(probably a Bendelow lay out done in haste when he laid out a more know CC called Nakoma CC in Madison WI).  The course was always there.  I can remember a time as early as ~3 when that course was there every day of my early life as a big playground.  But, I'm sure I batted around old balls at dusk down the first tee hill with an old sawed off hickory club when I was as young as 4 or 5.  But, it wasn't of any interest compared to the night walks in summer that I'd take with my fisherman Dad, in pitch dark with only a flashlight, looking for nightcrawlers.  To this day I can remember feeling our way in the dark and encountering an ominous bunker or mysterious land form of a mound or the neat dewy smooth turf greens... or tripping over or running into a bench or something in the dark.  Later, by age 10 or so, I had a BB gun along with every other kid in the neighborhood, and bow and arrows, and at night after golf, or in fall when it was closed, we would go shooting at squirels and rabbits that abounded.  (hardly ever really hitting one or hurting one)  I stole my first kiss in the woods along #2 where we had a fort and I sparked a neighbor girl at about age 6 or 7 when we were playing 'house' in the fort.  Ironically, at a HS reunion many years later, I learned that she had lived in a WHEDA home not 100 yards from that spot.

I was playing rudimentary golf with an uncle/godfather by 10 years old or so around the munis of Madison.  

Many child hood memories of a little 9 holer that NLE, but more a field of childhood play oriented rather than golf, as it was just something that was always on-going everyday there on our playground.  

But, the seminal golf moment (that I have described many times on GCA.com)  was at about 11 or 12 going to actually play at Lawsonia and seeing that magical course for the first time and seeing what real GCA was in land form features.  

Come to think of it, I should be a great golfer with all my exposure early on to golf courses and the game.  Why am I just a nostalgic hacker?    

[Bill_McBride]

I first started playing at age 14 in 1956.  The new Indian Valley Golf Club had just opened at the north end of Marin County and my dad took my brother and me out and we basically spent the entire summer out there.  He would get off the bus from San Francisco at about 5:30 in the evening and my mom and brother and I would pick him up and we'd all head out to Indian Valley for nine holes.  It was a great introduction to golf.  My mom didn't play but she was a fierce ball hawk in the rough.  One time she thought someone was poking her in the back and turned to admonish whoever it was.  Turned out to be a doe who was also looking for a Titleist.  Or more likely a Spalding Dot in those far off days!

The big events of the year were the re-election of Ike and Nixon, and some kind of conflict over the Suez Canal.  The Yankees won yet another World Series.  I started high school in the fall and made the golf team as a freshman!  It was all very June and the Beaver Cleaver in those days, with a little American Graffiti thrown in for spice.

[Dan Kelly]

V Blue               P 

I met Vida Blue in May or June of  that year.

I was a vendor at Metropolitan Stadium -- selling pop (soda pop, to most of you; Coke or orange pop, to be precise) or popcorn -- whichever seemed more promising that day.

All of us vendors were required to wear these horrible, flared-leg, Coke-patterned pants: the Coca-Cola logo and colors EVERYWHERE!

There was nothing like finishing a game with your Coke pants dripping wet with Coke and Orange pop!

One of the refill stations was down beneath the seats behind home plate. You got there by walking down a tunnel on the third-base side, which at one point intersected the tunnel between the visitors' dugout and their clubhouse.

One night when the A's were in town, and he wasn't pitching, I was heading out with a fresh load of pop, or maybe popcorn, when Vida Blue popped out of the tunnel just as I was passing.

"Hey, man! Great pants!" he said. He wasn't kidding. He wanted a pair for himself. I couldn't spare mine, obviously; I told him he should ask the Twins management, because they certainly had extras somewhere.

I wonder if he did.

He won the Cy Young and the MVP that year. I made about a thousand bucks, maybe -- along with my I-met-Vida-Blue bragging rights, which were big in those days.

(I suppose Vida Blue was no Huntington Hartford -- but he was mine.)

[RJ_Daley]

Dan, did you also go on to write the "Dockers" commercials?  Great Pants! 

[Tim Leahy]

V Blue               P 

I met Vida Blue in May or June of  that year.

I was a vendor at Metropolitan Stadium -- selling pop (soda pop, to most of you; Coke or orange pop, to be precise) or popcorn -- whichever seemed more promising that day.

All of us vendors were required to wear these horrible, flared-leg, Coke-patterned pants: the Coca-Cola logo and colors EVERYWHERE!

There was nothing like finishing a game with your Coke pants dripping wet with Coke and Orange pop!

One of the refill stations was down beneath the seats behind home plate. You got there by walking down a tunnel on the third-base side, which at one point intersected the tunnel between the visitors' dugout and their clubhouse.

One night when the A's were in town, and he wasn't pitching, I was heading out with a fresh load of pop, or maybe popcorn, when Vida Blue popped out of the tunnel just as I was passing.

"Hey, man! Great pants!" he said. He wasn't kidding. He wanted a pair for himself. I couldn't spare mine, obviously; I told him he should ask the Twins management, because they certainly had extras somewhere.

I wonder if he did.

He won the Cy Young and the MVP that year. I made about a thousand bucks, maybe -- along with my I-met-Vida-Blue bragging rights, which were big in those days.

(I suppose Vida Blue was no Huntington Hartford -- but he was mine.)

Another big Vida Blue fan here. When I was a kid we would go to Oakland about every other weekend to see the A's(or triple A's as I call them now). Vida would come out before the games he was not pitching with a bag of about thirty balls and toss them out to kids in the stands and autograph them afterward. I got one and still have it somewhere. I heard him recently in an interview say that he did that just to tick off Charlie Finley by costing the cheap Mic the price of new practice balls!

[Jim_Kennedy]

JK,
1968 was one of the most terrible years in all of American history.
An everyday dose of hope?, I don't think so.

[Ronald Montesano]

The only seminal event that matters is that I got under (or was it over?) the fence and onto the putting green.  I'd never seen grass that short and rolled around on it for a while.  After scouting the course for rangers, I played the first of countless three-hole loops on holes 3-4-2 at Grover Cleveland, site of the 1912 US Open...RIP John McDermott.

[John Kavanaugh]

JK,
1968 was one of the most terrible years in all of American history.
An everyday dose of hope?, I don't think so.

My argument for 68 is that it was the last year of innocent hope in America thus making it the greatest.  Hope without innocence is intellectual cynicism.

Time and Newsweek seem to agree:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,966422,00.html

http://prnwire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/11-11-2007/0004702702&EDATE=

[Jim_Kennedy]

JK,
I could easily agree with you, and Time, and Newsweek, ....but I won't.

[Rich Goodale]

1968 was the year that the first of the "War Babies" (aka the shock troops of the "Baby Boom") graduated from college.  I was one of them and it was a very good year.  Any sort of "age of innocence" was already gone, and one felt very much in the eye of a hurricane--serene inside but simultaneously exciting and scary at the edges.  It was the year that Blue Cross/Blue Shield ousted US Steel as the leading supplier of goods and services to General Motors.  Slide rules became obsolete.  General Electric re-organized into "strategic business units."  It was the first year that I played any significant amount of golf and I was crap, but loved it anyway.  It was the first and last year that I ever threw a golf club.  I visited the site of that folly last week at my 40th college reunion, and laid a virtual wreath at the base of the tree in which that club ended up being lodged.  Tom Paul and Pat Mucci were geezers and Bob Huntley was a god (some things never change.....).  Most of the rest of you were either sniveling little snot nosed bastards who kicked your balls out of the rough and turned them over in the fairways or just gleams in the eye of one or more of those bastards.  Disco music had not yet been invented and neither had the phrase "Have a Nice Day!"

Have a nice one anyway, Dan, and splurge on an emoticon if you feel like it.  I know I do.

Rich

[Dan Kelly]

Disco music had not yet been invented and neither had the phrase "Have a Nice Day!"

Have a nice one anyway, Dan, and splurge on an emoticon if you feel like it.  I know I do.

Rich

Finally, a decent answer to my question! 

[Rich Goodale]

Thanks

I am having fun imagining John in his best Saturday Night Fever polyester suit saying to his date at the disco:

"Sorry honey, I'd love to spend more time with you tonight but I've got an 8:45 tee time with Judge Smails, Dr. Beeper and my best pal Spalding.  Have a nice day....."

Rich

[George Pazin]

I started playing in '96 - and not because of Tiger. My best friend always said his bachelor party would be a golf trip, so when he called me in July 96 to say he had gotten engaged, I went out the next day to try to learn.

Can't say I know much about what golf courses opened that year, but Tiger did win his 3rd Am and embark on a relatively successful pro campaign.

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