My dad and I (I was 8 years old) had great box seats in the lower level, between home plate and the Mets dugout. In game one, Jim Hickman was batting against Reds lefty Jim O’Toole. Hickman popped one foul over our heads, and it hit the front of the press box and came down right on the seat or lap of the woman sitting behind my father. She reacted as if something disgusting had fallen in her lap and screamed, brushing the ball away from her and onto the ground under my father’s seat. He calmly reached down, picked up the ball, and handed it to me!

My dad was already a god in my eyes, but this cemented it! By the way, I have gone to hundreds of games with my dad, my friends, my wife, my kids....at the Polo Grounds, Shea, and yes, even in the Bronx (I grew up there), but this was the only game I’ve ever gone to where I got a ball.

And the second reason: we were driving home to the Bronx after the games on the Harlem River Drive (I’m not sure why we drove that day, we usually took the D train from Kingsbridge Road to the 155th Street Polo Grounds stop) and the lead story on the radio was that Marilyn Monroe had been found dead in her bed.

One more note: the victory for the Mets was their third straight win, their longest winning streak of the season, and brought their record to 29-79. They went on to lose the second game of the doubleheader, then lost their next two, won a game, then lost 13 in a row.