What is a good age to take a child to their first baseball game?
The over/under is three innings
It was the summer of 1991. My daughter was nine months old. I thought it was a good time to take her to her first baseball game and get her started in becoming interested in my favorite sport.
When I told my wife/her mom of the plan, I don't remember her reaction, but I’m fairly sure shaking her head and laughing were a part of it. I'm also guessing that we had her blessing because it gave her a night alone for the first time in what probably seemed like forever. So on a Saturday night in June, dad and daughter were off to see the California Angels in Anaheim.
When we made it to the parking lot, I pulled out our stroller—I had no plans to carry her for three-plus hours. I looked around and saw a lot of young children, but no one else was bringing a stroller into the ballpark. That may have been my first sign that I hadn't thought this completely through. But onward we went.
We had great seats that were given to us by a friend of my father's. It was in the second row behind the first base dugout. An excellent view for watching the game—unless you're a baby who doesn't care about baseball. Most of the night was spent either giving her a bottle or changing a diaper. I'm pretty sure we made it through three innings before I pulled the plug on Angels baseball.
As we were leaving, I noticed someone taking photos of young kids in Angels’ jerseys. The photo was turned into a baseball card with made-up statistics on the back—pretty cool. A nice way to leave the stadium. When we got home about an hour after leaving, my wife/her mom was laughing until I gave her Amy’s rookie card. HA!!
You would think that experience would have been a lesson learned, but a year later, my office had a family night at Anaheim Stadium. Not only did myself and the our now almost two-year-old attend, we dragged along my wife and our new four-month-old daughter. OY!!
It must have been such a traumatic night that my only memory of it is that it was the first time I saw Ken Griffey Jr play in person.
The reason for all these memories is that we’re about to try this exercise again. As you're reading this, I’m on a plane to Los Angeles. Tonight, a bunch of us are going to Dodger Stadium to see the Dodgers playing the Chicago White Sox, with a three-year-old boy attending his first major league game.
I'm not quite sure what to expect, but I know it will be different than thirty-plus years ago. The good news is that no bottles, diapers or strollers will be needed. The bad news is I’m not sure his attention span for something like this will be any more than my then nine-month-old daughter's.
No matter how it goes, there will be two things that will be memorable…the look on his face when he gets his first bite of a Dodger Dog and how, for the rest of his life, he can say he saw Shohei Ohtani in his first game. And that’s pretty damn cool!
All this first game baseball prep got me thinking. My grandson is closing in on age five. I was thinking about whether he was ready for his first live game. I asked him, “Hey Lev, do you like baseball?”I like basketball.” “But what about baseball?” “It’s okay, but I like basketball.”
Sigh! When does the Bulls’ schedule for 2025 come out?