There's really not too much to tell about my son's relationship with baseball.

Barry and I communicate in other ways -- music, philosophy, comedy, pop culture -- that sorta thing.

Baseball is just not his "thing."

But despite that he isn't a roto geek or fantasy sports expert (nor am I, by the way) I DO have PLENTY of baseball memories with him, just not the kind my Pop and I had.

I took him to Memorial Stadium a handful of times, including his first game when he got to see Nolan Ryan pitch for the Rangers. Honestly, when a kid isn't that interested in baseball and you ARE, it's a tough place to be.

He didn't care much about being there and you couldn't sit and watch the game anyway when you had to chase him. So, for my kid, the zoo or the mall or the park (he was BIG into the teeter-totter) was a much better place to hang out when he was 4 or 5 than 33rd Street.

When he got a little older, he DID love to go to Philadelphia, though, because it was more of a "he does something he wants to do" and "I get to do something I want to do" kinda deal.

Barry and I used to bug Shonda and Curt Schilling for tickets at least once a month in the 1990's when Curt was a Philly and Barry had gotten a little older. We'd go to The Vet, stop off at Dave and Buster's for fun, eat Rita's Italian Ice at the games and he'd try to run around the stadium and spend as much money as possible at the concession stands on swag and charity fundraisers. Remember, Camden Yards was PACKED every night so running around a crowded stadium just wasn't an option.

At The Vet, Shonda would always get us the tickets in the family section right behind home plate, so you couldn't beat the seats but he still never watched the games.

I took him to a couple of games a year at Camden Yards, especially on the nights when I didn't expect to work the clubhouse after the game, but other than getting an autographed ball and a handshake from Brady Anderson and Cal Ripken one afternoon, he really wasn't all that enthused about sitting through nine innings in a ballpark that was extremely full.

We haven't had a lot of "big" baseball games in this city since OPACY opened.

Here's his "baseball experience" in microcosm:

He was with me the night of Game 3 of the 1996 ALCS and was ready to go the game. I was broadcasting from what was then, Balls Sports Bar. He had just turned 12 at the time and he really was drinking up the "My Dad hosts a sports radio show" part of the baseball postseason thing.

Again, he was 12, ripe for the picking as a budding baseball fan if the Orioles would've sucked him in.

Of course, I put him to work, handing out SPANK THE YANKS signs everywhere around the bar and out in the crowd when he had an adult keeping an eye on him. (He always wound up on the news --somehow, someway, Jane Miller would wind up interviewing him!)

My show ended at 7 and we were packing up our equipment when he came to me 30 minutes before the game and made an announcement

"I think I'm gonna throw up!" he said.

I said something like, "Yeah, this postseason thing is rough on the stomach. I'm a little nervous, too, son it's been 13 years for me, too! Maybe they have some Tums or Pepto over at the Mobil station."

He said, "NO, Dad! I think I'm gonna throw up, like I'm sick, like I ate something bad!"
I said, "You can't do that. It's the playoffs, man!"

He INSISTED that he had to leave and I could NOT not go home with him. He INSISTED that I stay for the game because he knew how important it was to me.

It was a Friday night, the city was buzzing for the first ALCS game in Baltimore in 13 years and I wound up throwing my 12-year old son into a cab at the Mariott on Eutaw Street with a cabbie who looked legit, gave him a $20 bill told him to go my Mom's house near Eastpoint Mall. Twenty minutes later, I was in the stadium and he was, well, THROWING UP, in my Mom's bathroom.

Must've been the nerves, huh?

But he has no regrets. I honestly don't even know if he remembers it.

Then there was the night I lost him at Oriole Park in the early 1990's. I had him at the stadium with me -- we always went on a Friday night because I didn't have to work the clubhouse after the game -- and I left for a bathroom run, and he was gone when I got back.

Now, I'm not the paranoid type when it comes to parenting, and he'd run off in one direction or another plenty of times, but he had been gone for a few minutes.

Next thing I know I see him sprinting up the aisle right behind the Orioles' dugout. I went down to cut him off and asked him what he was doing.

"Hey Dad, I made a new friend," he said, excitedly. "I saw the comic book guy, Steve Geppi, down in the front row and I saw that there was an empty seat next to him so I ran down there and the usher didn't say anything. I told Mr. Geppi that I was your son, and he told me to sit down and he bought me a soda."

Ay, yi, yi!

"But Barry, I don't EVEN KNOW STEVE GEPPI!"

My son's response: "Well, you do now!"

Luckily for me, Geppi turns out to be one of the nicest men on earth, and I STILL apologize to him to this day because of my son's bravado.

Truth is: my son cared a lot more about comic books than he did baseball, even though he did play some Little League and was a relatively decent player. He's a pretty athletic guy to this day, plays basketball, football, the whole nine.

He's not one of those "throws like a girl" kinda guys at all.

He just didn't care to sit around a hot, crowded stadium more than a few times a summer and he always had something better to watch on TV than baseball when he was a kid.

I was at the ballpark most of the time for work, and only occasionally during the summer would he ask to tag along. Usually when he did, it was more to get "dipping dots" or "Boog's BBQ" than it was to actually see the game or cheer on the Orioles. He's never been the kind of guy who knows or cares about baseball history or statistics. He didn't really care about keeping score, or the Orioles winning or Brooks and Boog and all of that. He grew up around all of my heroes, not his.

It's just not him, and that's cool.

But part of that is baseball's fault as well. He just has never thought it was particularly worthwhile or interesting or fun to watch baseball games every night all summer.

But he likes to go to a ballgame now and again, and I usually don't find out until a week later.

And, even though he'll turn 22 the day after tomorrow (if you see him at The Rally tomorrow, wish him "Happy Birthday"!) and hasn't been a baseball lifer like me, he HAS something in his pocket that I don't have.

I raised my son alone, as a single parent with a major assist from my Mom as the "drop-him-off-anytime" babysitter, especially when he was little. His Mom was in his life, but just not in that day-to-day, pick him up, drop him off, get him ready for school, get him ready for bed kind of way.

That was my job.

Believe me there were more people involved in raising that child than I can possibly list, probably because I was a child when I was raising him. My parental influences and advice givers were the same ones he had.

But the older listeners will all remember talking with him or meeting him or having him answer a phone call to the station or have seen him on the street helping me with promotions. He's even done some ballpark reports over the years, but he just didn't think it was tremendously cool or particularly rewarding or fun to be in a locker room full of naked, rich baseball players.

On April 4, 2001, we were living in White Marsh like some updated version of "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" when he called me on my cell phone to see what I was doing that night. He was 16, had a driver license and he was manning the "Official Nasty Van" at the time.

I was going to the Recher Theatre to see The Alarm. It was the second game of the season for the Orioles, and they were hosting the Red Sox on a chilly night. The Alarm was one of my favorite bands in Hammerjack's heyday of the late 1980's. And I always HATED going to the ballpark in April and freezing my ass off, probably because my Pop wouldn't take me when I was a kid. Even though he was always excited that baseball was back early in the season, he was NOT excited by cold-weather baseball after a childhood in the mountains of Pennsylvania. He'd always say, "You don't go to Orioles games until the end of May!"

So, Barry called, extended the invitation and I declined. I figured he'd probably just skip it and stay home.

Four hours later, my phone rang. My son, on the other end, was calling to tell me that he saw a no-hitter that night with a couple of his buddies.

Let me say this, and I know my son Barry pretty well from the 22 years of experience I have with him. I don't think there have been three times in my life where HE has invited ME to an Orioles game. Just doesn’t happen. NEVER!

And the one night he actually called and said, "Do you wanna go?" I had another plan.
Hideo Nomo threw the only no-hitter in Camden Yards history that night. The Orioles were so appalled that there was an ad in The Sun a week later for Red Sox fans to buy unused tickets and a plaque to commemorate the achievement.

My son wanted one. I told him he was more out of his mind than whatever dingbat in The Warehouse dreamed that one up.

But he's got something I don't have, a legitimate no-no. And a ticket stub from it…
I've got two close approaches but neither one counts. I've also had three other games -- David Cone's perfect game (I was scheduled to go, but changed my mind two days before), Mike Mussina's 9th-inning close call (I had a date to go to the game but we literally changed our minds on the patio of Hooters and went to a restaurant instead!) and the R.F.K. Nats' Ramon Ortiz' 9th-inning collapse two weeks ago on Labor Day (we literally contemplated going at 10 a.m. that morning and just decided to watch Roger Clemens pitch on TV from Philly instead of dealing with holiday I-95 traffic!)

On April 15, 1987 I was listening on the radio to the Orioles-Brewers game from 33rd Street in my house on Kane Street near Patterson High School. It was the sixth inning and a Puerto Rican kid named Juan Nieves who had just turned 22 was throwing a no-hitter against the Orioles. I listened for one more inning and jumped in my car and headed over there. It was a cold night, the stadium parking lot was mostly empty, I pulled right up to the front and ran through the press entrance with my pass from The Evening Sun.

I watched Robin Yount lay out for the final out on Eddie Murray's drive into the right-centerfield gap. I was in the locker room that night when they were dousing this kid with beer and champagne. There were, generously, about 12 other reporters in the room witnessing what would be the greatest moment in the career of Juan Nieves, who went 32-25 in three seasons for the Milwaukee Brewers. He pitched almost 500 innings in the big leagues, but nothing like those nine he put together at the old girl on 33rd Street.

It was the first time I had ever seen anything like that celebration from the middle of it. It was like something I had seen on TV in October with Brent Musberger or Bob Costas in the middle of the pileup and champagne shower.

My boss Jack Gibbons was standing at the door to the locker room area and I offered to help in any way I could. He was usually pretty parental and upset with me when I buzzed anywhere near the Orioles because of my rabid fandom and youth. He was happy to see me that night. "Get in there and get some quotes," he said to me.

Juan Nieves is a name I'll never forget.

But, as much as I was "there," c'mon who's fooling whom?

That's kind of a "cheapie" to show up late like that, so I never really considered that one whole.

But the coup de grace isn't showing up late for a no-hitter, but instead walking OUT of a no hitter unwittingly.

On Labor Day 2001, I was in San Diego on assignment for Sporting News Radio chasing Tony Gwynn before his retirement and doing my holiday show live from Jack Murphy Stadium. You know: baseball, Labor Day, hanging out and doing an hour-long one-on-one sitdown with a future Hall of Famer that I've become friends with, a national sports radio show broadcast to about 300 cities for the holiday.

(Incidentally, I BEGGED my son, Barry, to come on this trip -- which included a stopover in Birmingham, Alabama to see Lynyrd Skynyrd and an Alabama-UCLA football game at Tuscaloosa-- but he declined. He was a very strange kid in high school!)

But for me, it was the kind of fun and the kind of trip that I had only dreamed about every day of my life as a kid.

And I was living this dream. I was getting sent to sunny San Diego for a Labor Day holiday, all expenses paid, to sit around and get visits from all of the coaches and players, and then I got to sit and watch a ballgame. And they even fed me!

I went for a few innings the Sunday afternoon before Labor Day to do a piece with Curt Schilling on the field because the Diamondbacks were in town. Seven weeks later they stunned the Yankees in Game 7 to win the World Series and he would be the biggest star in baseball for a few months of that offseason.

I left the D-backs game early on Sunday because it was my goal to actually sit and WATCH the whole game the next night -- Labor Day night -- maybe with my cousin Laresa, or her parents Tommy or Roxy or even my Aunt Jane, if she was feeling up to it.

But much like my disconnect with my son earlier that spring (and my wife and I feeling that way just two weeks ago and nearly missed ANOTHER no hitter), no one in my San Diego family was feeling up to a freaky 6 p.m. West Coast start on a holiday (it was an ESPN2 game), so I worked all morning -- my show was live from 11 to 3 PST -- and planned on just hanging at the ballpark for the game before my 11 p.m. flight back to Baltimore through Chicago.

I did the show from the mezzanine area (they call it the "plaza" at The Murph) and Bruce Bochy, Kevin Towers and several Padres players came on the show with me, as did a few of the visiting Cards' players.

It was a very unique show, even by my national radio standards. It was the only show I ever did from an actual ballpark, except for something like the All Star Game. Even for the World Series, we'd base the show in a bar, mostly Mickey Mantle's on Central Park South in New York.

But this was the one, it went very well and the show was over and none of my family was coming to the game.

Since sitting at the game alone wasn't a fun plan, during batting practice, I got a wild hair to call United and see if I could get an earlier flight back to BWI. Mine was scheduled to leave at 11 p.m. and would transfer in the middle of the night in Chicago and I wouldn't get home until 9 a.m. I was on the air from my home/studio (I had built a full service studio in the middle bedroom of my home in White Marsh…every day we did a show for more than 200 cities across the country, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago from a bedroom!) at 2 p.m. so a little more sleep before the show would be nice, I thought.

United had just the tonic. Pay $75 for the change of flight (the BIGGEST ripoff in the world I'd say…no wonder people hate these airlines and their practices) and they could re-route me through Los Angeles, but the flight would leave earlier, around 8:30 so I could shuttle up to LAX for a 10:30 nonstop to BWI. I would land around 6 a.m., instead of 9. Three more hours of sleep, a much more rested me and I wasn't paying the $75 (it was a work expense) so what did I care -- what wasn't to like?

"Book it," I told the reservations girl.

I sat behind home plate at The Murph, struck up a conversation with a very pretty employee of the Padres, who actually worked for Larry Lucchino, and I was going to put in the best three innings of baseball I could and then rush to the airport and get out of California.

At the end of the three innings, my new friend said she was up for walking me to my car out in the parking lot and she'd come back and watch the rest of the game.

After three innings I glanced up to see that Cardinals pitcher Bud Smith hadn't surrendered a hit (and, knowing my twisted little baseball mind, you KNOW that I thought about that, right!).

I KNEW that he hadn't given up a hit, but what were the chances, right?

I said my parking lot goodbyes, headed to the airport, then to LAX, then onto my on-time flight to LAX and stepped onto my Park N' Ride shuttle at BWI. It was 6 a.m.

A complimentary edition of the USA Today is a feature the shuttle folks have and I groggily picked up a Tuesday morning edition as I stepped onto the bus.

"SMITH THROWS NO HITTER IN SAN DIEGO" is the first headline I see on the upper right corner, complete with a color picture of Bud Smith getting interviewed on the field by reporters. I had dinner with those reporters in the same dining room 3,000 miles ago. It felt like that had been an hour earlier, even though it was actually about 10 hours earlier.

And, now, I'd unwittingly changed flights and walked out of the only no-hitter I might ever see in my lifetime, especially now that I don't really go to a lot of baseball games, only a handful a year since my Camden Yards exodus.

Bud Smith made 24 starts in his career. He was 7-8 over two seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals. He made one postseason start and pitched a gem against Schilling's Diamondbacks a few weeks later. He had 132 2/3 lifetime innings pitched in the major leagues. He threw nine un-hittable innings in a row that night in San Diego.

I saw three of them.

I walked OUT of a no-hitter in San Diego four months after my son, Barry, walked IN to one at Camden Yards.

I'm 38 years old and have attended -- conservatively speaking, here -- well over a thousand baseball games. I really have.

I never heard of Bud Smith before that day and I've never heard of him again. And I never heard from that girl in San Diego either.

Maybe they ran off together after that game.

I dunno. I just don't think it's meant to be: me and that no-hitter, especially in light of the near fiasco on Labor Day down at RFK two weeks ago!

But between my son, Barry, and my wife, I really don't know where we're going with baseball into the future. I've been married for more than three years and I'll make a public admission here that I've never made before.

I have NEVER been to a baseball game -- any game, anywhere -- with my wife AND my son at the same time.

Now, how weird is that?

Both are confirmed for The Rally tomorrow, as is my 87-year old Mom, who has given me the "thumbs up" for an appearance as well. She doesn't get around like she used to so I'm sending the WNST Racing Limo over to pick her up and deliver her to the Hard Rock. It might be the last time she gets to go to and have some fun, so why not? The last game she went to: Cal Ripken's 2131 night with her sister from Delaware. I got them tickets and Barry sat with them!

Yeah, we're gonna have some "old school" fun tomorrow!

I honestly hope that it's the first of many fun games and memories for all of us -- me, my wife, my son, my Mom and my friends and family and the entire community -- at Camden Yards.