The home opener arrived a bit behind schedule that year — Apr. 21 to be precise — due to the first strike in Major League Baseball history. I was there as a fan on opening night, part of the crowd of just over 20,000 at barely modernized Turnpike Stadium as Frank Howard launched one over the center field fence and the Texas Rangers burst on the local scene.
I was there the next afternoon as an usher ($1.60 an hour, guaranteed four hours) as fewer than 6,000 fans showed up and I wondered if the team might be heading back to RFK Stadium anytime soon.
Through the years I have been there (and the two nearby stadiums that followed) as a fan for about a decade, then a beat writer (filling in eagerly but, perhaps, not so adequately for Tim Kurkjian in 1984-85), later as a columnist for the last 24 years and, along the way, as a father of fans and even a parent of a Dot Racer in the summer of 2013.
