My son is nearly five and a half years old. Over the past couple weeks, I have enjoyed watching him with pride conquer a few firsts.

• Last week he started kindergarten.
• He rode the school bus for the first time.
• He went bowling.
• He played a video game (Wii bowling)
• He visited an archaeological dig of a found mastodon
• He saw jets take off and land at O’Hare
• He saw his first Cubs game at Wrigley Field

These things are all rites of passage in their own right. Kindergarten is a biggie of course. The day he took the bus for the first time, I took off work to race to meet him when the bus delivered him back home at 3:15. I was there with the other parents, video camera ready, to meet the triumphant little warrior upon return to his kingdom. The bus pulled up, he got off and promptly asked to go play with his neighbor friend. No special day, no special reception, no stories, no ice cream, nothing. With a passing sigh I said that would be fine. In this moment I realized my boy is growing up.

A dad taking his son to his first ballgame was as meaningful to me as it was to him. I never did it much with my dad as he isn’t much of a baseball fan. It was my mother who lived and died with each pitch of Cubs baseball for much of the past half century. It was she who was my Cubbie buddy, going to maybe a dozen games a year or so from when I was about seven years of age. Back then the Cubs were a miserable team and the games were poorly attended. We would wake up on a summers day and go about our morning in the usual way. Then around 10am or so, she’d say “do you want to go to the ballgame today?”.  This was music to my young ears. “Yeah!” And we would grab a light jacket if the calendar didn’t say July or August because ‘it’s always 10 degrees colder at the ballpark’, she would tell me, and make it to Wrigley well in advance of the 1:05 first pitch.

We would walk a block from our home to the Loyola L station and hop a train South to Addison (always an A and B stop on game day) and arrive at Wrigley Field a few minutes later.  We would walk right up and by a General Admission Grandstand ticket only to immediately trade up to Reserved Grandstand upon entering the main concourse of the old ballpark. Our seats would always be part way up the third base line, several rows behind the Cubs dugout. There was never any problem getting in, and getting a great seat.  In the mid-1970’s they often didn’t even open the upper deck unless it was a weekend!

So taking my boy to his first game was really special for me, and I think he too thought it was significant. We had a great time even though the Cubs would get clobbered. (they went on to win their next 7 straight games) We saw two Cubs hit home runs which was quite thrilling to see. He had never been in a crowd that big before, nor had he ever experienced the crescendo of cheers that goes along with a home run by the home team.

It was a great day to be sure, even if my boy was more interested in the six – count ’em six! – cotton candy vendors that were roaming the seats in Wrigley Field that day!