With Spring Training underway, I thought I would start a little "Fan Spring Training" of my own, by resurrecting ghosts of baseball seasons past. A past that steroids, strikes, and surly sluggers cannot take from us.

And so it is without further adieu that I will relate to you the tale of my first major league ball game:

I grew up in a house that hated baseball. Outside of a few games watching the old Salt Lake Gulls with friends and scout troops, we didn't watch the game. To mention any appreciation for it was a guaranteed risk of scorn and ridicule from the family. So it was some surprise to me as a young adult that I found the game so compelling.

Oh I know what spurred it on, of course. A young center fielder named Griffey, a shortstop that could spear everything between the second base bag and the hot corner, a young third baseman who would go on to be remembered as possibly the best designated hitter of all time, a right fielder who could hit the ball a country mile, and a giant of a southpaw pitcher who could throw that ball at you faster'n you could see it coming. Yes, for all their mediocrity (they would not even post their first .500 season until a few years after I began following them) those Seattle Mariners of the late 80's were a fun team to watch.

And the 90's would be a new decade, the first decade that my beloved M's would reach the playoffs, and many other firsts that would make fans proud of their status. But it was one day, one moment in time late in the 1990 season that will always be that moment frozen for me in memory. That moment when I can remember the anticipation of the first pitch, as Randy Johnson stood on the mound ready to deliver his soon to be legendary fastball. That day when I stood far up in the nosebleed section above the right field foul line.

The road to that game had begun back in April, when Leaf candy announced a promotion. For so many Leaf candy wrappers, you'd get a free ticket to select ball games. We gathered up our wrappers, selected the date, and circled our calendars anxiously awaiting our opportunity to go watch the M's in the confines of the Kingdome. No other team could have ever made such an ugly structure appealing.

The game was against the Kansas City Royals. I was a George Brett fan, and so the game had been picked partially in hopes of getting his autograph.

Just under two weeks before the game came the announcement that we never anticipated. One that would make the game not only memorable, but a truly historic moment, memorable not only in OUR minds, but in the annals of baseball history. The Seattle Mariners had made a deal for a player, and the player only had to clear waivers. Our eyes went back to our calendars. We figured that our player would be in the lineup either the day we were attending or the next. We would either make the event or we wouldn't.

It was on the drive up to Seattle that the starting lineup was announced. We cheered as our highest hopes came true, and we walked into the Kingdome with about 35,000 other fans, all abuzz with the news story that would make this game newsworthy from coast to coast. It was really happening; we were really there.

As we headed down to the dugouts to try to get a few autographs (I got one from Harold Reynolds and Omar Vizquel...I would score Dave Neihaus' autograph after the game), it was a surreal moment. There, spread out before us, were the players we loved, admired, and sometimes weren't too crazy about. There was Pete O'Brien, the highly paid free agent who had taken the spot of our beloved Alvin Davis, who was now relegated to the role of DH. There was Randy, working through his pitches with the bullpen catcher. Along the other side, we watched Bo Jackson strut, back at a time when Bo Jackson was still Bo Jackson.

And then the ushers brought us back to reality as we had to head up to our assigned seats, far up and away from the action, but with a commanding view of the playing field. We rose for the national anthem, and every fan stayed on their field and cheered as the starting lineup was announced, and our new left fielder, Ken Griffey Senior, took the field with his son, the first time in major league history that a father and son played on the same team.