I’ve been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember.

Since I was the only one in my family who was interested in the sport, I often listened to games on the radio. It was a rare treat when I got to watch one on our family’s black-and-white TV.

Growing up, I was jealous that my brother got to play Little League, while I was stuck being involved with Brownies. My parents said if I wanted to help Mike practice at home, I had to buy my own glove.

I found an advertisement in a comic book where I could earn money selling greeting cards. Living amongst cotton fields nearly 15 miles outside of Bakersfield, California, I put the cards in the basket of my bicycle and pedaled around to make my sales pitch to all the different farmers.

Although John wasn’t initially a big fan, he took me to my first Major League Baseball game a couple of months before we were married in 1983 — general admission tickets at the Kingdome in Seattle were $3! Since then, we have gone to baseball games at 13 different major league ballparks.

We’ve also taken several trips to Arizona for Cactus League spring training games and I went to Florida for Grapefruit League games. Another cool experience was an interactive exhibit that simulated the feeling of catching a fastball at the Nolan Ryan Center in Alvin, Texas.

And we experienced baseball nirvana during a trip in 2000. In addition to attending games at Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, we headed to Cooperstown to tour the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

While we couldn’t afford tickets to the actual games, we participated in various fan festival activities during the MLB All-Star Game in Denver (1998) and Seattle (2001). My friends made fun of me when I got a bit misty-eyed when meeting Bob Gibson and Lou Brock.