Growing up, I was never a baseball fan. I tried playing it... T-Ball, Little League... all of it. I just wasn't good. In third grade, I tried out for little league and was basically the last kid chosen. I went an entire season without getting a hit. On the last game of what would be my last season I finally put bat on to ball and legged out what I thought would be my first ever hit. I got thrown out and my love for the game died with my feeble attempt at batting prowess.
My mom eventually ended up dating this guy who was a big Cubs fan (they are both originally from Chicago, life just happened to take them to California) and that is where baseball in my family started as far as I knew. I was never super in to it... it was just a thing we did. If the Cubs came out to San Francisco, we would make a whole weekend of it and go see Museums (a big nerdy thing my Family likes to do) and then spend the evening at Candlestick. They eventually got married and over the years, the Cubs were the family team. As I grew up, I never gained an interest in baseball but when I was active duty in the Marine Corps, I was lucky enough to be stationed down in San Diego. When the Cubs came to town they would plan a big weekend to come visit me and we would go grab a game or two. At this time, I'm still not a baseball fan or a Cubs fan but any chance to see my family was welcome.
From there I received orders to Virginia where I was to report to Headquarters Marine Corps, Training Command. Just a dude with orders and no friend circle. From there I linked up with a guy that was looking for a roommate that had an amazing log cabin on like 12 acres down in Fredericksburg. We became roommates and fast friends. I'm a bit of a social butterfly, yet he is not. He is however, a HUGE sports fan. So he would always talk about football, and baseball and yadda yadda. At this particular time in my life, I was not a fan of sports in general, or baseball specifically but I was a huge fan of chasing tail. I saw that the Nats were doing a post game concert with Dierks Bently and I tell my friend that we should buy 2 tickets a piece because offering girls in F-Burg, Va tickets to a country concert is about as close to a slam dunk as you can get. We do that, we get dates and as women are known to do, they delay us. We waited for my buddy's date until about the 3rd inning and as we were coming in from the older, much larger Bullpen party area, one of the old Nats catchers hit a home run. Had a blast at the game from then on and became obsessed with the team sense (Dierks couldn't play that night, so he was replaced with Big and Rich)
From there I started watching games every night. Like Every night. I started dating a new girl (not the one I took to my first game) and she became a huge fan. She then introduced me to her children who became huge Nat's fans. That was our thing. I wasn't making a lot of money at the time but I could always find a way to scratch together enough to get us cheap seats to a game. I remember back when the Pretzels were Curly W's and we would have to share 2 between the 4 of us because we couldn't afford an extravagance such as pretzels. And then I have to move away.
I move away from the DC area and decide that I'm gonna keep watching Nats Ball. I got mlb.tv, I bought season tickets in Atlanta so I could always see the Nats when they came to town and that was great. But it wasn't Nats Park. Eventually ended up in Florida for 3 years and WAS NOT HAPPY so I started looking around. I had an offer to move to Japan and accepted but it fell through at the last minute. I was butt hurt and went back to my old gig not expecting to hear back only to be contacted in September of 2018. They asked me if there was anywhere else I wanted to work and I immediately knew that I wanted to come back to the National Capital Region so I could be a season ticket holder.
Here I am and here we are. I love it. Let's Go Nats!
