Growing up on the south side of Chicago in Evergreen Park meant my summer usually revolved around my brothers playing baseball, and the TV tuned into the White Sox games with my dad as their most avid fan. 

I can still see him sitting in front of the TV watching the game, or intently listening on his transistor radio.  When everything was going good during the game he drove us crazy shouting, and when they were bad, he called them bums.

 My dad John McBride was considered somewhat of a celebrity because of the Chicago White Sox.  He was their batboy from 1929 through 1934.

Living in the neighborhood three blocks from Comiskey Park, around the age of 8, my dad and his buddies would hang out and collect empty bottles for entry into the next game.  By the time he was 10, he graduated into selling seat cushions. His game was to shame the men into buying them for the comfort of their dates.

At the age of 14, Sharkey Colledge, the White Sox clubhouse manager asked Johnny to be one of the batboys.  Little did he know this was to make him an instant celebrity in the neighborhood.  His payment for the job wasn’t cash, it was a baseball than had been in play that day.  If he had it autographed it sold for as much as $5, which was good money for a young boy during the depression.

His favorite player was Babe Ruth.  I recall him telling me when Babe walked onto the field the crowd would go crazy.  He truly believed "the Babe" invented the standing ovation.  He also told us how Ruth was the only player he knew of who stayed and signed every autograph. 

My dad witnessed a moment in baseball history that happened on the day of the first major league All-Star Game played at Comiskey Park on July 6, 1933.  As he was the senior batboy, he was asked to work this game.  He was 19 years old.

It was the bottom of the third inning and Wild Bill Hallahan of the St. Louis Cardinals was pitching.  My dad, along with Lou Gehrig, knelt in the on-deck circle waiting for “the Great Bambino” to step up to bat.  Hallahan fired a blistering fastball and Ruth hit it head on.  The crack could be heard all over Comiskey Park.  Babe Ruth hit the first home run in the first All-Star Game.  The fans went wild.

Without a beat, Johnny McBride ran up to home plate to shake the Babe’s hand.

When the big guy arrived, my dad said, “Nice goin’,” Babe.

“Thanks, kid,” Ruth replied in a gruff voice.

That moment was frozen in time forever when a Chicago Tribune photographer snapped a photograph of Johnny McBride shaking the Babe’s hand with Gehrig looking on in the background.  It appeared in the paper the next day.  The photographer gave my dad an 8×10 copy, which he had Ruth and Gehrig both sign.

That one picture has appeared in numerous newspaper and magazine articles along with my dad’s story.  The Chicago Tribune honored him including it in two books; Chicago Days, 150 Defining Moments in the Life of a Great City, and Chicago Lives.  It also appears throughout the inside walls of U.S. Cellular Field.    

Even though my dad passed away in 1998 at the age of 84, the Chicago White Sox, and Chicago Tribune keep him alive.

In my mind, the thrill of a lifetime lives on in his memorable baseball stories that taught me the love of the game.