Memory Lane . . . an adolescent crush and a middle aged Mom

I'm a huge fan of my local library.  Lately I've been on a kick of reading biographies.  In the past few days I have read Gifted Hands by Dr. Ben Carson, Believe by Eric LeGrand and I'm currently reading Imperfect by Jim Abbott.

I was born to two parents who are baseball fans.  My mom, in particular, is a huge fan of the (California/Anaheim/I refuse to use their current "location") Angels.  I was born in Orange County, lived there until Christmas vacation of Kindergarten, and came back in 1998 when I was in 6th grade. No matter our geography we were Angels fans, even travelling to Oakland to watch them play the "local" team every year on hat day.  (My mom refused to keep her hats and, begrudgingly allowed us to keep ours, though we never dared to wear them).  In 1986 my mom even flew from our home in San Jose, CA back to Orange County to watch a playoff game.

When we moved back to Orange County my parents went in on season tickets with my aunt's co-workers. There were 8 people in the group who each got 4 seats to 10 games a season.   While I definitely went though my New Kids on the Block phase most of my adolescent crushes were on the Angels roster.

One of those happened to be Jim Abbott.  One of our 10 games in 1989 happened to land on the day of Abbott's MLB debut.  I was thrilled!  Alongside my posters of Joe McIntyre I had pictures of Jim Abbott. 

A few moments ago I got to the part of the book where he talks about his first start.   I haven't read his account of that day, yet, but the memories are coming back for me of where *I* was that day and in the years he was on "my" team.

I remember taking his picture at Photo Day (One day a year fans were allowed on the field to take pictures of their favorite players--always from behind a rope) and wishing I could meet him.

Now that I'm 37, have been married for 9 years and have 2 kids it's comical to me to think about that 12/13 year old girl who had a crush on a major league baseball player, but reading the names he mentions throughout the book are bringing back a flood of memories from afternoons spent at the ballpark with my family and of evenings spent at home watching my Halos on KTLA.