ALL of my Pop's favorite guys were left-handed, so I assume mine became that way too. I just loved to watch Fred Lynn and George Brett swing the bat, kinda like he liked Ted Williams and Stan Musial.

C'mon, pick a switch hitter, any switch hitter? Eddie Murray, Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose -- any of the great ones! And I bet you enjoy watching them bat left-handed more.
I dunno, one of life's mysteries when you're a kid.

Reggie wore those white shoes and had those big 70's fab shades and that 'fro, and cool poses on his baseball cards (go ahead and look at those early 70's Topps Reggie cards and just tell me that he doesn’t look like a ballplayer). He took that long, majestic swing and he did it with ferociousness. And, when the game was on the line, when the light was shining the brightest, Reggie Jackson came up big every time. Again, and again, and again.

It wasn't October if "Mr. October" wasn’t involved, even if it came at the expense of the Orioles. And it almost always did!

Reggie played in the postseason every year from 1971 to 1982, except for two seasons and both of them were the Orioles' fault. He missed the playoffs in 1976 because he WAS an Oriole and he missed in 1979 because he WASN'T. And that was WAY before the wildcard crap.

From the time I was 5 until I was 10 (and I assure you that baseball was the ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN MY LIFE during those years), he was in the World Series four out of six years. He WAS the World Series in many ways.

When I played in the Berkshire Little League, I wanted No. 9 or No. 44, just like Ahmed wanted to pay tribute to Hank Aaron in the "Bad News Bears," I wanted to pay tribute to Reggie -- worship at his temple.

I thought his number would rub off on me and I could be the Venezuelan right-handed, slow and white Reggie Jackson of my neighborhood. Maybe I'd start winning the big one instead of striking out like I did against Rich Pfaff at Eastwood!

And, once I found out that he had a Baltimore connection through Johnny's and local baseball, I was convinced Reggie was the real-life baseball Superman.

You wanted to hate, but you just couldn't! He was, well, in a word: GREAT, at least with the bat!

So, I liked him and wanted to be him, even if I never really became a "fan" of his in the way of collecting his baseball cards or his posters or whatever.

And my Pop just thought I was a communist for even considering buying a "Reggie" candy bar. But I did.

Lemme bust up my little fantasy meets reality story with one tale of childhood vs. adulthood reality.

I met Reggie Jackson one time. I've been in his presence many, especially at Yankee Stadium because they've been good over the last decade and he hangs around.

I was in the 33rd Street press box in 1986 and the Angels were in town (no doubt, a younger-and-more slender and handsome Peter Schmuck was within 20 feet of me) and Reggie was a late-inning entry into a tight ballgame and was facing former Angel Don Aase, who was brought in a year earlier as one of three saviors (along with Lee Lacy and Fred Lynn) who were signed to revitalize that 1983 magic.

On the whole, those seasons were the setup for 1988's 0-21 meltdown for the Birds, but on this day Aase had his good stuff.

He had runners on, a tight situation and a classic Reggie at-bat and potential game-altering home run could be on tap. So the old girl on 33rd was buzzing on a Saturday afternoon because the game was also nationally televised on NBC. Tony Kubek and those cats were around the ballpark.

Aase threw his heat and got Reggie Jackson to pop out to shallow center on a high fastball.

In the press box that day Ted Patterson, another guy I idolized in the Baltimore media while growing up, was seated next to me and I was soaking up his knowledge and stories. (We both loved the memorabilia side of things at that time. I gave that up about 15 years ago. I only collect my own pictures and ticket stubs and press passes these days, but as my wife and this little montage will tell, I have EVERYTHING -- every ticket stub, every picture, every story, every guitar pick, EVERYTHING from my sports and music lives.)

Ted Patterson had been around the game in Baltimore for about 15 years, which comprised about 95 percent of my life at that point. I was 17 on this particular day and I was enjoying my first season as a genuine media member who could rub up against the people I'd read, seen and heard around town. Ted Patterson, like John Steadman, Vince Bagli, Tom Davis and others of that ilk, were absolutely HEROES to me.

I didn't "worship" them in that autograph kind of way, but I always wanted to hear their stories about sports and the business and players and coaches. I wanted to learn from them because I wanted to BE them one day.

No doubt about it, I thought that spending my life chasing around athletes and rock stars and having a forum to write and talk about what I'd seen, heard and did would be a fun way to live.

And you know what, 22 years later I'm still stealing money. I really am!

I realized early on that I was NEVER going to be Reggie Jackson -- I just wasn't a good enough ballplayer or born with those skills -- but I COULD one day be a John Steadman or a Vince Bagli.

And it never felt like "work" to me. It still doesn't most days, except of course, when I have to deal with the Orioles. They drove me into retirement two years ago! (Hey, maybe I should be holding a "Thank You Orioles Day" instead of The Rally on Sept. 21?)

But I digress…

Ted and I were discussing sports memorabilia (and again, I was a pretty big goober for baseball cards and programs and ticket stubs…as big a goober as you'd find in a Dundalk kid, and that's saying something!). He had mentioned something about a 1969 All Star Game program from R.F.K. Stadium. I happened to have one. Ted said that he knew Reggie pretty well and Reggie was looking for one to add to his collection (he played in the game in 1969 but didn't have a program). I lived 10 minutes away on Kane Street and literally drove home during the game to get the program. Ted said he'd compensate me with something cool later if I gave him the program to give to Reggie. Great! Reggie Jackson is going to own MY 1969 All Star Game program.

I got back to the ballpark, the Reggie "moment" happened in the game and the game ended with the O's on top.

Ted and I went into the clubhouse (and my boss, Jack Gibbons, HATED when I went into the clubhouse when I didn't have an agenda or was really working on a story) and found Reggie to give him the program. The media did their thing, asked him some questions and he was discussing how that pitch he popped up on was one that he would've driven earlier in his career when he was a younger man. He basically said what we all knew: he was getting older (he had just turned 40 and would hit just .241 that year and his career was over less than 15 months later).

I followed his comment with a question, something a kid would ask but a relatively benign one: "Hey Reggie," I said. "How is it different to face a Don Aase now vs. a Nolan Ryan or a Jim Palmer 10 years ago?"

What followed to this day, more than 20 years later, still blows my mind.

He glanced at me and laid the wood to me, a 17-year old kid.

"Who the fuck are you?" he sneered at me. "Who let this fucking kid in here? What the fuck are you doing asking me a fucking question?"

I swallowed hard and waited to see if he was joking. He wasn't.

"What the fuck do you know about baseball?"

I don't know if he thought I was a kid who snuck into the locker room or whatever? But I DID have a press pass, I DID gain entry and I WAS floored, if not by his being unprofessional, but more by the sheer meanness of it all.

Reggie Jackson was not a very nice man.

Ted Patterson gave him the program and that was that.

Since then, I have run into him on the street in Denver at an All Star Game and my wife and I had breakfast in a booth right next to him at the Super Bowl in Houston a few years ago but I have never spoken with him again. I've also seen him in a few Yankee dugouts under "working" conditions.

One time, my producer at Sporting News Radio had him booked into a show with me.
I thought about just bringing him on and telling him what an asshole I thought he was, but making him look small would only make me look smaller because I had nothing to gain, really, by being jerk just because he was 15 years earlier.

But, to this day, I have never, ever taken on heat like that before from athlete and never by someone I idolized.

The day that his house burned down, I celebrated on the air. Loudly and obnoxiously, which I'm sure you have a hard time believing considering I used "Nasty" Nestor as a moniker for almost 15 years.

But, I guess the lesson here is be careful what you wish for when you're a little boy.

All of a sudden, those childhood memories of me begging my Berkshire Little League manager for No. 9 or No. 44 seemed like the most foolish thing in the world as I was entering into manhood.

Even if I had soured on Reggie, I had not soured on the baseball postseason or the Fall Classic.

During the fall of my Reggie "incident" I got tickets through my contacts at The Sun in October 1986 and went on a weekend sojourn to Shea Stadium to see the NLCS and the Mike Scott show when the Astros played the New York Mets. I was at the Lenny Dykstra home run game but heard the home run on the radio from a freeway in Queens. My friend Dennis Harty and I left the game early to beat traffic! He was PISSED!

I even have John Steadman's press passes from that series and he wrote some great scuffball stuff on Scott because Davey Johnson was the manager of that Mets team and he knew and trusted Steady from the 1960's "old school" Oriole days. Steady gave me a scuffed baseball that Davey Johnson got in the dugout during the game, and gave to him to prove it was no conspiracy, this business of Scott scuffing baseballs!

I can't make this stuff up!

In 1987 I threw parties at my house on Kane Street every night during the Twins-Cards series. (I actually threw parties on Kane Street every night of my life during those days!)

In 1988, I can tell you who was with me (of course all names would be changed to protect the guilty), where I was and what I was doing when Kirk Gibson hit that ridiculous home run off of Dennis Eckersley. But it wouldn't be right to give you her name!

But I do remember pacing the floor of my bedroom in front of my television, telling her that I'd remember her for the rest of my life because she was with me when I saw it and Vin Scully called it and those break lights in that parking lot out behind where my Pop and I sat at Dodger Stadium all flashed a vivid red when the ball into the Southern California sky. It's been 18 years, I've seen that video a thousand times, and yes, I still remember her and how my jaw dropped open when he hit that home run.

In 1989, I was pulling out of the Capital Centre parking from an Elton John concert that I was reviewing when I put the radio on and heard the news that a massive earthquake had rocked the Bay Area before Game 3 of the Giants-A's World Series. That's still probably the weirdest newscast I can ever remember hearing in my life, even weirder than 9/11. It was like "War of the Worlds," especially if you're a baseball fan. What were the odds of those teams actually PLAYING in ANY World Series, and to have a massive natural disaster as the bowl of the stadium is filling up for the game and both teams are six miles apart?

You just don't forget where you are when you hear that kinda thing.

Girls and rock and roll (hey, I had an ALL ACCESS pass for Hammerjack's during these years!) had surpassed baseball on my hierarchy of human needs, but I watched every game of the Cincinnati/Chris Sabo win in 1990 and the Kirby Puckett/Minnesota extravaganza in 1991.

In 1992, which was my first year doing sports radio on WITH as the Orioles rolled into Camden Yards, I got World Series tickets for all of the Pittsburgh games through David Segui (every player got the right to buy postseason tickets and he hooked me up!). I was sitting in my bed on Kane Street watching Game 7 of the NLCS between Pittsburgh and Atlanta on my first big-screen TV, which I bought SOLELY to watch the World Series and the Super Bowl in the highest of luxury possible without having to pay for the trip. That Sony 52-inch box television was the first really expensive thing I ever bought for myself. It was $2000 and I saved up my money for months so I could have it.

It was the final inning, final game at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium and the Pirates were about to win, which I took no solace in other than that I would actually be GOING to the World Series. Hell, if the Steelers and Yankees had played in the World Series of Picking Up Pixie Sticks With Their Butt Cheeks at that point, I'd have bought tickets to see it.

I was a big fan, nothing more, nothing less.

So as much as I was "hating" on the Pirates, I needed them to win to go the World Series. I've never been a sports bettor or really much of a gambler at all, but I suppose this is like when you bet against your own team or for a team you just HATE, but if you win money, it's all good!

I was literally sitting on the bed with the majestic, colorful ticket strips sprawled out. The seats were on the roof in Three Rivers Stadium (probably the worst baseball stadium this side of Exhibition Stadium in Toronto), so let's not get too excited.

But, I WAS excited, clearly so much that I had them on the bed with me, so YES, I was geeking a bit.

Needless to say when the Francisco Cabrera-Sid Bream incident happened, my tickets suddenly became vouchers for refunds and my reconnection with that fabulous thing called the World Series, which I hadn't seen in person since 1983, would have to wait at least another year. I really wouldn't have had the time or money to do a road trip to Toronto or Atlanta, where hotel expenses and gas would have been more than I could afford, so I didn't ask Segui for tickets.

By 1993, though, I had a few more nickels and was doing relatively well with my little radio show venture on new WWLG, which was really the whole WITH staff just moving stations from AM 1230 to AM 1360.

After broadcasting from a garage during the spring of 1993 (that's a story for the NEXT book -- but we literally broadcast from a neighborhood garage in Timonium for about eight weeks, lawnmowers running in the afternoons and all), we finally had nice studios near the ballpark at the Lord Baltimore Hotel and I had more contacts with players and the tickets for the World Series were an afterthought for most players so they were easy to get once you figured out they were easy to get if you knew someone.

But I NEVER took it for granted, going to the World Series.

I went to every game of 1993 World Series, and considering that three of the games were in Philadelphia and my "sometimes companion team" in the Phillies was involved, it was really a blast to be there. And being an Orioles' goober, I also HATED the Blue Jays. And -- the best part -- I had my first press credential for a World Series, on the backside of having my first credential for an All Star Game at Camden Yards three months earlier.

And, then there was that "Curt Schilling" connection.

I had actually been at the Schilling's house and crashed after Curt pitched a gem in Game 1 of the NLCS against the Braves. I drove back to Curt's house with Mike (the brother-in-law that we called "Flea") after the game and we all watched the highlights on SportsCenter in their living room. Curt was such a collector of memorabilia that he brought home a bag of game-used balls from that game. It was his first postseason start and it was really cool to see how much it all meant to him, because he had just lost his father a few years earlier as well.

So, knowing Curt and Shonda as well as I did, it also made the entire month a really fun experience for me, even though that Joe Carter homer run kinda screwed it all up in Game 6.

I'm embarrassed to say it, but I never did break out that bubble P, Richie Ashburn hat that week, even though I found it going through some old junk to write this crazy story!

For the first weekend, I drove to Toronto with three friends: Bill "Swish" Morrison (a walking encyclopedia of sports trivia…think Stump The Schwab!), lifer Dundalk pal John Rafalides, whose dad Pete, hooked me up for Game 2 of the ALCS in 1983 and that magical Mike Boddicker night and my stock broker, Dave Miller. We almost hit a deer on the road on I-83 near York but we drove all night, stayed in one hotel room and saw Games 1 and 2.

You cannot imagine the feeling in my nervous system as I stood on the field at the Skydome in Toronto. There was Dave Winfield, Robbie Alomar and Joe Carter to my left, Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk and Darren Daulton ready to take BP to my right. All the lights were on, the place was packed, the energy was incredible and I was at the World Series.

It was, in a word, surreal for a 25-year overgrown kid from Dundalk who was fighting to get a ticket in 1983 and sneaking down to the dugout well at Memorial Stadium to take pictures of the same Phillies team that "Dutch" Daulton played two games with 10 years earlier. (Even though he was a September call-up in '83, he did dress next to Schmidt, Morgan, Carlton and Rose, right?)

I went on to the three games in Philadelphia and even slipped out of the rain delay of that crazy Game 4 that Toronto won 15-14, to see Madonna perform across the street at the Spectrum.

And when Curt Schilling pitched a five-hit shutout in Game 5 to send the series back to Toronto, I got BACK in the car with a friend and headed back to Canada for two potential games.

We drove all day and arrived in time for the game, and Joe Carter's jumping, leaping home run ball landed about 50 feet below me in the bullpen. The crowd went crazy, we ran for the exits and that town went plum crazy.

We walked out of the Skydome and across the lake fireworks were going off everywhere. Horns were honking, alarms were going off, fireworks were shooting throughout the city and here I was, was pulling my Phillies jersey off so I could avoid trouble.

But I got to see firsthand -- for the first time in my life -- what a victory celebration looks like in a big city.

And I got to see what having a major sports franchise can do to a community when the stars align just right.

It was inspiring, and I HATED the Blue Jays and had since the "Why Not?"1989 Gregg Olson meltdown on that very Skydome turf.

I hated Cito Gaston for what he did (or didn't do?) to Mike Mussina in the All Star Game three months earlier. I had actually printed and sold a few "CITO SUCKS" shirts in my time around the ballpark that summer.

So, the Blue Jays I had no use for. But they were a class organization to deal with. Nice employees, nice people, nice fans around the stadium. Just civil, decent Canadian folk, you know "kinder and gentler" so to speak.

And that party on Yonge Street that night swept my friend and I up into a whirlwind of excitement.

Bars blaring music, people taking to the streets, beer, revelry, excitement, hugs, high fives -- the stuff people here in Baltimore have had eight chances to experience. The Colts won three titles, the Orioles have won three titles, the Bullets won once and the Ravens did their magic five years ago.

No disrespect to the Blast or the Terps, but trust me the streets didn't shut down and everything doesn't stop when they've won their recent titles. It just doesn't, and I need only remind you of Jan. 28, 2001 and the madness on the open streets of this city to approximate what I'm talking about here.

It was Christmas, New Year's, the millennium, the end of a war, a graduation and wedding and a birthday party all rolled into one.

Right? Don't you think?

And that's what's missing from the BALTIMORE Orioles right now and has been for a long time.

The chance to soak in that feeling that I saw everyone have on Yonge Street in Toronto that night.