⚾️ From Ebbets Field to Spring Training: Family Memories and Baseball
- Kathleen Kuczma
- Apr 6
- 6 min read
As the home opening weekend for both the New York Mets and Detroit Tigers wraps up, I find myself reflecting on baseball memories that stretch across generations—and across multiple branches of family.
Growing up in the capital region of NY, there were many sports team allegiances - for baseball, the Yankees was the most common, followed by the Red Sox and then the Mets.
My first baseball game was an 8th grade school field trip to the old Yankee stadium. Walking up to the nose bleeds, I cursed my fear of heights as my hands froze holding my Dippin’ Dots ice cream.
My dad, a lifelong Mets fan like some of his sisters and his mom (originally a Brooklyn Dodgers fan), had yet to bring my sister and I to Shea Stadium. I used this field trip for a different type of trip - a guilt trip - to push my dad to bring us to Shea.
That next summer, my family and I sat in sunny left field. I wore a pink Mets shirt with white lettering—orange didn’t feel like my color then (though now I’ve fully embraced it). I watched excitedly as the Padres’ manager and multiple players were ejected one by one. The intrigue!
Digital camera in hand, I proudly announced I was going to tape the whole bottom of the 9th inning as the Mets were tied with the Padres 3 to 3. The taping abruptly ended as I caught David Wright’s only career walk-off home run, my shrill scream heard above the jumpy picture.
It’s magical thinking that this happened with David Wright as my favorite player, corresponding with my first game and my first and last game at Shea. (Citi Field opened the following year.) For fun, I’ve included the shortened clip below. The quality! Imagine if I had my iPhone 14 Pro with that zoom capability.
Like all good beginnings, my dad and I wrapped up the Mets' David Wright era when we attended Wright’s last game in September 2018. I’ll note that I had wanted to buy tickets for that game before it was announced as Wright’s last game. After the announcement, well, let’s just say they were the most expensive baseball tickets I have ever bought. But it was worth it.
It All Started with the Dodgers
Before the NY Metropolitans, there were the Brooklyn Dodgers. My grandma Emma Kopaskie (née Hoffman), born seven years before the first baseball was broadcast on the radio in 1921, grew up in the small town of New Hurley. She benefited from the games broadcast on radio, allowing millions of women who often did not have the free time like men to attend games to also enjoy.
I like to imagine my grandma listening to Dodgers games called by Red Barber between 1939 to 1952, with his signature southern drawl. The radio was sometimes balanced with watching Jackie Robinson on a black and white TV in the combined living and dining room where I spent my first dozen or so Thanksgivings. (See this blog post for those recounted memories.)
Red Barber was known for a variety of signature catchphrases, ranging from "They're tearin' up the pea patch" to describe a team on a winning streak to a “Can of corn” for describing an easily caught fly ball to “rhubarb” for any heated on-field dispute.
To hear Red Barber’s southern drawl announce Jackie Robinson in the line-up of a 1950 Brooklyn Dodgers vs Boston Braves game, visit this YouTube link here. (I listened to this broadcast while typing up this blog.)
The Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1957. Her eldest daughter, my Aunt Gert, an avid Yankees fan, said it took her mom a bit to warm up to the new team. But once she did, she was a Mets fan for the rest of her life. My older cousins recount how my grandma would listen to the Mets radio while sitting outside in her garden, shucking beans, while watching her grandkids play outside in the front yard.
Aunt Gert, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday in March, has her own amazing baseball memories. How many people can say that their first game involved sitting in center field right behind Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams?
Meanwhile in Michigan
Around the same time my grandma was listening to Red Barber, Paul’s grandma Fannie “Fran” Pearson (née Riskel, Kuczma) was listening to Tigers games. Telling stories about baseball when she was younger, she remembered “Hammerin’ Hank” Greenberg and Schoolboy Row. Her fondest memory in school was the chance to play baseball with her classmates in her rural town north of Detroit.
Back to NY - Highschool Baseball Assistant
Other sides of my family tree also had baseball connections. My grampy, Paul Lavin’s experience with baseball was as a baseball assistant for his local Hoosick Falls highschool team. There’s an old class photo of him with a slight grin, standing in his fancier clothes next to teammates dressed in their baseball uniforms.
This was his last year in school before he needed to drop out by the age of 15 to take care of his dying mom and work on a family’s farm. His dad, an alcoholic, put his younger siblings into an orphanage. In later years, my mom remembers her dad as a Pete Rose fan, rooting for the Cincinnati Reds from their small NY/Vermont border town. I recently thought about him and this family trauma while watching The Outsiders musical as Sodapop dropped out of school around the same age.
Happier Memories and My First Connection with Paul
After revisiting that part of my family’s story, it feels fitting that baseball was also part of the beginning of something lighter—like meeting my husband, Paul as my Mets fandom became a bridge for some of my first workplace conversations.
Soon after starting at NSA, the Tigers made a major trade to the Mets, trading Yoenis Cespedes for the Mets minor leaguer pitcher, Michael Fulmer. Paul was in a fantasy baseball league (I had no idea that existed), and he said that my National League expertise could balance his American League expertise. I wasn’t much help.
Months later Paul watched all of the postseason Mets games, my first true postseason run as a Mets fan. I’ll never forget sitting cross legged on the couch in his Jessup, Maryland apartment as the Mets lost to the Kansas City Royals. I knew that anyone willing to watch all postseason games for a team he didn’t root for was either a big sports fan or he really liked me. In this case, both were true.
Back to April Pasts
Baseball is a long season, and anything seems possible in April. The Mets have a great track record for starting off strong and then crashing and burning. One of the best April seasons the Mets ever had was when I was in the Bahamas in 2012. With no phone and no way to check scores, I relied on my dad’s nearly daily email updates about how the season was progressing. (There was a small computer lab on the old navy base which we accessed once a day.)
Fast forward over 10 years later, my dad and I attended our first Mets home opener. With typical spring weather in NY, the game started in the 50s but by the time it ended, we were having hot chocolate to stay warm. The Mets continued their successful streak of having the most opening day wins of all teams in the MLB.
Not that this has historically mattered much given our last World Series win was in 1968, while my dad was in his late 20s. (I was hoping that 2015 would be my “ in my 20s” Mets World Series win experience. Now I’m hoping it’s in my 30s!)
It's a Bit Warmer in Florida
After bundling up for our chilly home opener, it felt like a full-circle gift to trade hot chocolate for sunshine the following year (2024) at Mets spring training - our first!
We met Daniel Murphy, which gave my dad a chance to extol his frustration with the 2015 call against the Dodgers where Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg sliding into second base and he wasn’t called out despite not touching the base. Murphy’s response was, “The throw could have been better”, referring to his own toss to Tejada to turn the double play. A bit of humor nearly 10 years after that amazing World Series run.
Final Inning
As Ken Burns put it in Baseball, “baseball is the mirror of our country.” But also of our families, our rituals, our shared collective memories. It holds our personal firsts—like David Wright’s first walk-off and a baseball fantasy league—and our lasts, like the final cheers from Shea, grandma’s radio, or from my seat at David Wright’s final game.
Postscript: What I Would’ve Written Last April
“This season did not start off on the right foot for the Mets. Starting 0–5, I was rooting against the Tigers to give us our first win and avoid going 0–6.”
By the end of the 2024 season, I didn’t expect both the Mets and Tigers to make postseason runs! Here’s hoping for another great season in 2025 and another year of baseball!
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