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By Bill Contz
For the Mirror
Last week I crossed off a bucket list item by attending my very first World Series game, evidently succumbing to a severe case of rattlesnake fever in the desert.
Now you may ask yourself, what's a former offensive lineman doing writing about baseball during football season? Good question.
Please join me on a little sentimental journey, won't you?
My visit to Chase Field in Phoenix occurred nearly 52 years to the day my father sat in the center-field bleachers of Three Rivers Stadium for Game 4 of the 1971 fall classic to watch Danny Murtaugh's Pirates battle Earl Weaver's Orioles.
Early on during the very first night game in World Series history, Murtaugh motioned in a side-winding rookie named Bruce Kison from the bullpen.
Kison promptly set a World Series record -- which still stands today -- by plunking three different Baltimore batters during six plus innings of series-altering, shut-down relief.
I was 10 years old, and at the time, backyard wiffle ball was my only exposure to organized sports.
Steel-mill jobs were plentiful and gasoline sold for under 40 cents a gallon. Tricky Dick Nixon was in his third year of running the country while a similarly tenured Charles Henry Noll appeared to be running the Steelers into the ground with an unimpressive 8-24 record as head coach.
Unbeknownst to most, plans were being finalized to relocate the hapless Washington Senators from the nation's capital to north central Texas, where they would embark on five decades of futility the following spring.
I tapped StubHub to acquire my two World Series tickets (coincidentally enough, also a Game 4) affording my wife and me the luxury of sitting 33 rows behind the visitors' dugout under a flawless Arizona sky, thus cementing our own place in history as baseball's consummate fair-weather fans.
Luxury does come at a price and while I refuse to divulge the absurd sum of money I forked over for the seats, I will state for the record that the service charge StubHub conveniently tacked on to the transaction would have easily covered one of LeBron James' monthly lease payments -- for his Lamborghini.
The game I witnessed was a one-sided affair with the Rangers jumping out to a 10-0 lead after three innings on their way to an easy win.
It served as a precursor to the following night when they would win their 11th straight postseason game on the road and end over 50 years of frustration by bashing their way to their first title in franchise history.
The Rangers homered in every one of their 17 playoff games, the longest streak in postseason history while Cory Seager became the first shortstop to hit three round trippers in Series history.
Evan Carter, a 21-year-old rookie, became the youngest player since Mickey Mantle to bat third in a World Series game and reached base in every one of those 17 games, a record for a player in his first postseason. He also set another postseason-record by hitting nine doubles.
Both players' accomplishments are significant since this year's fall classic only lasted five games.
Records aplenty and, hey, only 52 years apart. Hats (probably Stetsons) off to the Rangers for patiently waiting long enough for me to finally attend a World Series game to win the whole enchilada.
Contz was a starting offensive tackle on Penn State's first national championship team in 1982 and played six NFL seasons with New Orleans and Cleveland. He published a book in 2017, "When the Lions Roared: Joe Paterno and One of College Football's Greatest Teams." He resides in Pittsburgh.