Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Tom is a huge guy, about 6'5" and 250 lbs
and my centerman in my hockey beer league.

Tommy leading us to safety

He skates like Dave Keon

and has "soft" hands

- he is very easy to play with. He's also a cop.

 
Robert is a successful business entrepreneur.

He ran a hockey stick company 

Another goal with his TITAN wood stick

in the '80s

and Gretzky was his main client.

Robert became a pal,

advisor, agent and
room-mate

for the young player before he became The Great One.

 
I've known Sam, a Toronto native

since he was 8-years old and I helped to get him the job

of Blue Jay bat boy 25 years ago.

Then, he achieved the impossible.

Sam Cosentino

Following his bat-boy days,

he earned an on-air spot

as one of the Blue Jay analysts

and colour commentators on home game telecasts. 

If you've watched Jays baseball on TV, you've seen Sam.
He was very well read and delivered some terrific insights into the game. 

 
Then there is Markwell.

Marco's disguise ... he's a "First Responder"

He's the Blue Jay team mascot, "Ace",
he used to be called “BJ Birdy”.

In "real life", 
Markwell is a professional dancer. Following his dance career, he became a Toronto fireman.
He and his wife have 3 babies under 5.

He loves his time in the spotlight at Blue Jay home games and he's an exceptional athlete. I play shinny hockey with him once a week.  We play at noon so it doesn't interfere with his time with the Jays, or putting out fires or nap time.

 
A few weeks ago, I got a call from an American friend, 
Martin, who lives in Miami. I have no idea how this happened but he may be one of the biggest Blue Jay fans ever, going back to their first game in 1977.
 
I had been to every Jay Home Opener for their first 38 years but I really don't like baseball since "Duke" and "Campy" left Brooklyn for the coast.

And, although I was at the 1992 & '93 Jay World Series, 
I usually don't go to regular season games.

Martin told me he was coming to Toronto. Could I arrange tickets to attend one of the weekend games?  Somehow, I managed a pair of tickets just 3 rows behind the Blue Jay dugout. He was over-the-moon when I called him with the good news.
 
On game-day, he insisted we go for dinner close to the Rogers Center and get to the stadium in lots of time to watch BP.
 
It seemed like other fans had the same idea.  As we left the restaurant, we were consumed by the flow of fans-on-foot marching towards the corner stop light to cross to the stadium.  It was also rush-hour and vehicle traffic was bumper to bumper. 

I told Martin "better to wait at the light than getting run over".  Just then, the cop directing traffic blew his ear-piercing whistle and shot his two white-gloved hands up in the air to stop the cars.

Hey! Mikey!  How you doing?
It was Tom the cop.

I don't know how he picked me out of the crowd but they parted in front of us and we walked across the street as if we were visiting royalty. I waved a thank-you to Tom and explained to Martin that he and I are hockey buddies.
 
We no sooner reached the other side and I literally bumped into Robert. I introduced him to Martin as Gretzky's agent.

While Robert and I got caught up I sensed Martin, who's also a crazed hockey fan, was standing beside me with his mouth open starring at Robert -- Gretzky's agent?
 
Inside the stadium,

For me, it will always be "SKYDOME"

we had no trouble
finding our fabulous seats
-- 2 on the aisle.

Sam-the-colour-commentator was sitting directly in front of us in Row 1 doing a last minute check before going on-air.  He had his file papers and notes spread out on the roof of the dug-out.  I hadn’t seen him for a while and when I called out to him, he stopped everything and came bounding over the seats in front of us to shake hands and meet Martin.  He left us with some things to look for during the game and updated us on all the injuries. 

Martin had his mouth open again. How'd you know this guy?
 
When we rose for the national anthems, the Blue Jay mascot stood directly in front of us on the field.  Following the song,
I yelled at "Ace" and when he saw me he went crazy and performed one of his dance moves - the fans thought it was for them. Martin said... "wait a minute ... do you mean you know the mascot too"?

Yea! I said we played hockey yesterday at lunchtime.
 
I grew up in Toronto in the 1950s when you felt like you knew everyone. My pal Martin thinks that's still the case.

There was a time when everyone in the phone book with my surname was related to me.

I gotta go to more Jays games.

It proves the world gets smaller as I get older.
 

      

UPDATE: Sam Cosentino's career as an analyst was short-lived. One of the current Blue Jay broadcasters asked to have Sam removed from the telecast. I could imagine this blow-hard saying something like ... 
"what would he know about the game, he was a bat-boy"? 

Anyways, in my opinion, he was a loss to the Jay telecasts but he moved over to OHA hockey on Sportsnet where he is also very well versed and gives outstanding reviews and opinion on hockey players who are about to graduate to the NHL. 

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