As the years advance, baseball's magic retreats.

• Author: Iovino, Tony
• Position: Athletic Arena

I TURNED Willie McCovey recently. (That's 44 for those of you who don't associate age with the numbers worn by ballplayers on their uniforms.) That's a big year to live up to.

When I was a kid, there were only a few occasions I went to the ballpark. We didn't have season tickets, or weekend season tickets, or even the popular Tuesday-Thursday-alternate Saturday season ticket plan. We needed a special occasion to go, and that in itself made those days and nights exceptional.

My brother and I each got to go to a game for our birthday. Johnny being a New York Yankees fan, we went to the Bronx for his; mine, a seat in the third deck at Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets. I'm Willie McCovey now, but I have no plans to go to the park for this birthday.

Birthday games had rules. They had to be on a Sunday. They had to be doubleheaders. Mom made bologna sandwiches, with mayonnaise that ripened nicely over the course of a few hours in the sun. We each were bought a hot dog, a Coke, and one ice cream. I do recall a couple of bags of peanuts: I'm sure there was more, but not much more. Certainly, the idea that a cap, pennant, or

T-shirt might be coming home with us was nuts. We didn't even think of it, so it wasn't that we were disappointed. It simply was out of the sphere of possibility, as removed from our reality as a trip on the Queen Elizabeth or a visit with the Pope.

We always arrived early--very early. We got our money's worth. We saw batting and fielding practice, and then two games for the price of one. I loved those games. Although my mind would wander sometimes, it was during those Sunday afternoons that I came to appreciate the game and my father.

It's an old story that sons and fathers bond over baseball and, even in the roughest or most awkward of times, men can intergenerationally "talk baseball." I know this is true. Other than "I'm very sorry for your loss," the phrase most spoken by men at funerals is "How 'bout them Mets (or Yanks, or Cubs, or Sox)." I don't know what they do in locales where people seem less substantial, like California, or where major league baseball is so new that its roots haven't taken hold yet, like Tampa Bay, but in real cities, where baseball preceded the designated hitter, it is acceptable to talk baseball anywhere, anytime. I imagine that more than one father, at a loss for any other words as he is handing off his daughter to her groom at the end of the aisle, has whispered "Any score?" and heard his...