One cool, brisk, summer afternoon – as Mark Twain may or may not have said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” – an 18-month-old Joe Perrino was snuck into the San Francisco Giants’ Pacific Bell Park (now known as Oracle Park) to watch his first baseball game. Thereafter, I was forever hooked.

The Beginning

When I was three years old, my family purchased season tickets to watch the San Francisco Giants. Every year I was in elementary school, we went to at least two games a week. I started off going for the kids’ entertainment at Pacific Bell, playing tee ball games at a mini stadium where I’d smack mighty 25-foot home runs, going down the famous slides inside the giant Coca-Cola bottle in the left field pavilion and running the bases after every Sunday afternoon home game.

I started playing PONY (Protect Our Nation’s Youth) Baseball myself, and the fun I’d have at the stadium transferred over to my own games. I couldn’t wait until Saturdays rolled around so I could hit the field with my friends and play some ball. I would have dreams at least three times a week fantasizing about smacking a home run, or making a cool play in the field. It may be corny to say, but baseball was legitimately my first love.

Teenage Dreams

In my high school days, going to Giants games became an escape. I could leave the realities of schoolwork, relationships and my own play on my high school team behind for three hours to enjoy a game with my friends. The coach of that high school team was one of the worst humans on the planet, so in an almost romantic way, watching a Major League game became a vessel for me to yearn for my own success. I may not have been paying attention to all the intricacies of the game, but it was a way for me to relax in the midst of a hectic time period. 

In the last baseball game I ever played, my high school team was in the second round of our section playoffs, facing off against our school rival. I was the undisputed best pitcher on the team, but I had pitched five innings just three days prior. Instead of sending me out to the mound with a chance to save our season, my coach put in a freshman in an attempt to “save me” for the next round. There was no next round, and I was forced to end my playing career on the bench drowning in my own tears. 

Waning Love

I still loved the Giants, and I still loved the game of baseball. But after my career ended that way, I felt a small disconnect with the sport itself that I had never experienced before.

When you’re a kid, your passions shine as bright as the sun. It might be sad to say, but over time, the fun had been taken out of the sport for me.

But even as I’ve grown up, I still carry a part of that childhood spirit with me – the part that watched Marco Scutaro bask blissfully in the glory of a 2012 trip to send the Giants to the World Series. I may have lost some of the love I once had, but that hasn’t stopped me from buying a cardboard cutout in Oracle Park during this pandemic-shadowed baseball season, going to games when feasible, loving the Giants or hating the Dodgers. I’m as excited for the playoffs as I was when I was a kid; who knows, maybe as I grow into adulthood, I’ll end up rediscovering the game I once loved so much.