In my golden years, when youngsters seek out my wisdom and beg to hear about the historic moments I’ve experienced – the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is putting together a script, and the Des Moines Community Playhouse has agreed to do the casting – I’ll be able to tell them about the time I saw the immortal Alex Rodriguez play a game in person.

He went 0-for-5 and booted a ground ball.

“Gee, old-timer,” they’ll say, “that’s really not much of a story.”

It’s an important lesson, I’ll explain while trading them my Social Security check for a digital ice cream cone. You take what you get.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had seen only one New York Yankee in person. I snapped a photograph of Mickey Mantle wearily signing yet another autograph at a pro-am golf tournament in Iowa City, long ago. It was a memorable moment, but only because we all knew his track record. The Mick didn’t put a lot of effort into being lovable.

Then life returned to its Yankee-free state until we decided to take in a game in Minneapolis. Our younger son is a fan of the Yankees, so he and I drove up to see them play the Minnesota Twins. Fortunately, A-Rod aside, it turned out to be a perfect day at the ballpark. The weather was ideal, the Yanks won, 3-0, and Curtis Granderson flew around the bases for an inside-the-park home run. Hey, if I were making $8 million this year, I would try hard, too. Give me a shot.

Plus, Target Field is a great stadium. It sits next to some of downtown’s classy skyscrapers, looks terrific, treats the customers with wide concourses and lots of concession stands, and you get enough statistics to qualify for college credits. Now I know what WHIP stands for.

I appreciate the charm of a relic like Wrigley Field, but it’s nice not to sit behind a steel column and to park in a spacious ramp right across the street instead of battling for a square foot on the “L.” And gigantic video boards can make real life almost as interesting as television.

Maybe we were just lucky, but we also didn’t have to sit next to beer-swilling loudmouths. Sometimes I think drinking is the only reason people like professional sports. But then I remember there’s also gambling.

And how does it compare to watching a baseball game inside the Metrodome? It’s like being at a baseball game instead of hanging out in an aircraft hangar.

An elderly Tony Oliva signed autographs outside the gates before the game, which reminded me that I once was a Twins fan.

It was good to be on the bandwagon when Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Camilo Pascual and Zoilo Versalles were winning the 1965 American League championship.

Imagine that, I thought as a kid. Famous, successful stars just one state up. What would it be like to see them play? Unfortunately, our family never seemed to get north of Garner, so I missed out on seeing big-league ball as a wide-eyed kid.

The closest I came to major league glamour was growing up with a guy who said his dad had a tryout with the Yankees. I guess it was true. But this was the same kid who tried to convince me that a big storage tank on a sidetracked railroad car was an atomic bomb.

The man sitting behind us at Target Field said he has been a Yankees fan since 1955, but this was also his first time seeing the team in person. He’ll tell stories about it, too. No matter how the technology and architecture change, baseball floats on a cushion of sentiment.

The more I think about it, maybe reminiscence is the wrong place for precision. If future tykes still care about baseball, maybe I’ll tell them that I saw Alex Rodriguez win a game with a grand slam.

Everyone might have a wireless mental connection to the Internet by then, but I still should be able to get away with it.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com