I don’t consider myself a baseball expert. I used to think I was, but as I got older, I began to realize how much I didn’t know. My younger self envisioned becoming a major leaguer, but that kind of crazy imagination lent itself much more to a career in cartooning. When I was 21 years old, I began drawing the Drabble comic strip, and I’ve continued for over 40 years. But in the summer, I’m usually drawing with a Dodger game on the radio. In fact, if you’ve seen much of Drabble over the years, you’ve probably seen my characters attending baseball games at a stadium with palm trees behind the bullpens.

At Inglewood High School, I would often have a transistor radio in my pocket with an earpiece running up my jacket sleeve, so I could listen to the very important spring training games from Vero Beach. I never got caught either, mostly because nobody ever looked at me.

My dad is the one who introduced me to the Dodgers. He loved them. He was Irish, and he loved that the O’Malleys owned them. He was probably the first in line for tickets when they moved west. He took my older brothers to games at the Coliseum. My parents divorced when I was only seven, but my dad stayed part of my life, picking me up from my mom’s house every Saturday and driving me to his house in El Segundo for the day, where Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett were often on the radio and sometimes even on TV.

He took me to Dodger Stadium for the first time in 1968 – the most beautiful place I’d ever seen outside of Disneyland.

Dad was well into his 50’s then. He was a heavy smoker and a bit out of shape, but I remember him walking from the parking lot into Dodger stadium with a definite spring in his step. He wore his Dodger hat, lit up a cigar, and seemed to know everybody there.

On the way into the stadium, he bought a souvenir program for 25 cents. It was mostly ads with a few black and white pictures here and there, but when P.A. announcer John Ramsey gave the starting line-ups before the game, Dad opened the program to the scorecard in the middle and wrote down each name and their position on the field. He taught me how to keep score that day, which has become a lifelong joy for me when I attend games. Most people don’t keep score anymore. That’s too bad because it’s fun! The scorecards I’ve kept as an adult have cartoon ideas jotted all over the place.

Don Drysdale pitched on that first visit to Dodger Stadium. When ‘Big D’ came to bat for the first time, my dad told me that most pitchers were not good hitters because they mostly practice their pitching. But Big D was different. He was liable to hit the ball out of the park, so get ready! Drysdale immediately belted a long fly off the bullpen fence in left field for a double. I was very impressed with both Drysdale and my dad! I would have loved to have met Drysdale but never got the opportunity. The closest I got was in the early ’90s when I took my wife to a game. She got up to explore the stadium and was gone forever. She finally came back looking starstruck. She somehow found her way up near the press box (where she wasn’t supposed to be) and literally bumped into a very tall and handsome man who just happened to be Mr. Drysdale. I wish I had gone with her!

Although my dad died over 40 years ago, I still think about him when ‘It’s time for Dodger baseball!’ He’d be thrilled to know that his love for the Dodgers was not only passed on to me, but to my three kids who never knew him.

I remember driving to the stadium with him one night. He said he saw Maury Wills in a restaurant having lunch. As Wills got up to leave, my dad hollered “Hey Maury! My son and I will be at the game tonight! We’ll bring the luck of the Irish with us!” Well, unfortunately, they lost 9-0 that night. At least that was the score when we left in the 7th inning. It was a quiet ride home.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my wife recently did some genealogy research and discovered my dad’s family wasn’t really Irish; at least not that much. I’m glad Dad never learned that bit of family trivia. But on the plus side, her research also found that we were distantly related to Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Rogers Hornsby!

I wonder if that would have impressed my dad? Probably not. Knowing him, he would’ve said “Who cares? They weren’t Dodgers!”

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Editors Note: ThinkBlue LA is pleased and honored to welcome lifelong Dodger fan and popular Drabble cartoonist Kevin Fagan to our writing staff. Kevin’s syndicated comic strip can be found at www.gocomics.com/drabble.

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