You know you are getting old when...

...your favorite baseball player dies.

You know, it was a couple of years before I would bring myself to call Terry Francona by his father's nickname.

You see, Tito Francona was and probably still is my favorite baseball player.  He was around when I was old enough to realize that I would probably be a lifelong Indians fan.  I latched on to him.  I don't even know why.   Maybe it was because he was left-handed and played the outfield like I tried to do.  Maybe it was because he hit .363 when I was 6 years old, the first memory I have of being an Indians fan.  I don't really know why.

It's weird that you don't realize how close you are in age to these guys.  He was only 19 years older than me.  He could have been a really older brother or maybe an uncle instead of this guy I put on a pedestal.

I don't know what kind of a person Francona was but, in the dark ages of Indians' baseball, he was my light that kept me going.   When he moved on to St. Louis I would listen to Jack Buck and Harry Caray broadcasting over KMOX in St. Louis with my transistor radio under my pillow so that my parents didn't know I was still awake and so I wouldn't disturb my brothers who were trying to sleep.   I did the same thing when he moved on to Atlanta.

He was my favorite player and you follow your favorite player wherever he goes.   As I was cleaning out some stuff the other day I noticed that I still had an article cut out from a paper the day after Tito had a 5 hit day for the Oakland A's when he was 35 years old and was mostly just a pinch hitter towards the end of his career.   I remember that, for luck, I would carry that article around in my wallet...for years.   It was just a little article but, when it is a highlight in the career of your favorite player you save it.  I saw the title of an article that said he was the oldest living Oakland A.   Seems odd to me but just another thing that made him special, I guess.  Maybe I will tape it to a condolence card and send it to our manager, the new Tito Francona.

I will never forget the effect Tito Francona just playing the game he loved had on me.   It made me a lifelong Indians fan.   His son managing the Indians to more success than Tito's Indians ever had makes it even more special.   Tito Francona was a ballplayer when ballplayers were larger than life.  He was a ballplayer when little kids looked up to ballplayers for all the right reasons.   I don't know how many other people considered him their favorite baseball player but I hope he now knows that he had a least one person who thought that the baseball world, and a little kid's world, revolved around him.