What the hell was I thinking???!!
Luckily though, that's not a steadfast rule. That not everything you enjoyed through 10 year-old eyes was crap or not worthy of adoration. For me, one of those was Baseball Superstar, Roberto Clemente.
I didn't start following baseball until I was nine (1970) and I of course became a fanatical fan of my hometown team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
By that time Clemente had been winning batting titles, MVP awards and throwing runners out at the plate for well over a decade. This was the twilight of his career. But for me, all this was new.
He easily became my favorite. Not only by his play on the field, but for the persona he had off the field. His nickname was The Great One and it fit.
Well I'm going down memory lane a bit here because of the latest Wheaties Box. As I strode down the cereal aisle at my local grocery store (searching for a chocolate flavored cereal with marshmallows and a decent prize inside) I was surprised to see the Clemente Wheaties box there.
Surprised because:
a) He's a Pittsburgh player and this is a Philadelphia grocery store
b) He's been dead for over 30 years.
It turns out that this Limited Edition box is a salute to Latin Major League Baseball players. While that may be true, for a few minutes for me as I bought the box, it brought back memories of a time when baseball players were great, not obnoxious over paid jerks-
and the Pirates actually went to the playoffs.
1 comment:
Nice – I saw the same box the other day, and thought the same thing – ‘did I miss something?’ then saw the Latin players references on the back. Was kind of surprised that it was written in English/Spanish or was not bilingual.
The ‘don’t I already have enough stuff?’ question did come up briefly while I stood there in aisle 7; but only briefly.
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