WAIT A MINUTE, IS THAT… !?!?

Harry Caray

“Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd;
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win, it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game.”

This past Friday the first full day in Chicago, my 2 sons and I went to the first of two ball games at Wrigley Field. If there is one truism it is that you don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy Wrigley Field. In fact the Cubs fans at Wrigley will attest to that! They have had few winning seasons in their 100 years or so in the league.

It was a beautiful sunny Friday, and as we entered the 100 year-old ballpark: the field with its wide expanse of green grass trimmed off with the ivy walls that adorn the outfield, a real sense of ‘happy’ takes over as a baseball fan. There is no other place like it. That goes for the fans too. A resolute lot of middle Americans who die for their team, living and dying on each pitch just like they do in New York, had very little to cheer for that day.

Known for the Harry Caray seventh inning stretch of his rendition and lead in the baseball hymn: ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’, a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of baseball I along with everyone else sang along.

After another glorious victory by my Mets, we along with 40,000 others filtered out of the stadium and into Addison Street. We decided we would go to a bar and wait the crowd out that was heading toward the Red Line of the Chicago subway system.

#2, #1 and Sandy Aulderson, GM of the Mets!

As we passed through bar after bar in the crowded street, something catches my eye. There standing on a corner speaking with a few Mets fans is this guy, tall and very distinguished looking, who if you look at him would think he was a Dodger fan with his laid-back appearance and he had a steely manner. My small mind starts to go through my unknown file (people I can recognize but have never met) and see the name and face come together. WAIT A MINUTE, IS THAT… !?!?

But I’m not sure and I do another take and think: “Yeah, that’s him, its gotta be!”

Touching his arm I say: “Aren’t you Sandy Aulderson??!! Hey guys, come back here, look who it is! It’s Sandy Aulderson, GM of the New York Mets!” Would you take a picture with my two sons, I raised them to be Mets fans all their lives!”

The man was extremely gracious for this old fool and my boys got the time of their life, especially #1 Son who lives and dies the Mets. This should make up for the Apodaca autograph he missed at his junior high school once.