MOMENTS, MEMORIES AND MADNESS with STEVE CAMERON: From Day 1, McCovey took us on quite the ride — school or no school

This really is a two-part story.

I’ve fiddled around, trying various outlines until the wee hours of the morning, but I just couldn’t make the thing a single tale.

Not without turning it into a novella.

Besides, cramming everything together would sort of muddle both events — and the second one involved what I’d call the single most dramatic few heartbeats of my life watching sports.

I know that sounds overly dramatic, and yeah, I’ve seen an awful lot of games or matches in various sports — several with breathtaking conclusions.

Maybe it was my relative youth that made this moment in question stick with me, year after year.

But it WAS pretty special, even in a historic context.

Let’s put it this way…

If you were a Dodger fan, Kirk Gibson’s improbable — almost unbelievable — home run off Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series would run through your head forever.

OK, I’m definitely NOT a Dodger fan, but that’s the magnitude of my memory — and as a bonus, in my piece of drama the Dodgers were forced to suffer leading up to it.

That part makes me smile.

SO NOW…

Let’s forget about Kirk Gibson, who was a grumpy character most of the time, anyhow.

(Yes, I later got to know him, but that’s not our story.)

For starters, we need to take our time machine pretty far back to reach the first event in my two-part adventure.

That day was fun and exciting in its own way, mainly because I skipped a class to take in a ballgame with my pal Dan Pisano.

It turned into our own version of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and most important, it set the stage for my “major moment” just three years later.

Anyhow, let me address the issue of missing class.

That’s not the sort of thing my mom would have allowed — no way, none at all — but we’re talking about summer school, and supposedly a “voluntary” class.

My mother insisted I receive a proper Catholic education, from grammar school all the way through college.

They don’t teach you much that’s practical in parochial schools, though, so Mom decided I should add those skills during the summer.

The class in question on the day Dan and I decided to bolt was typing.

And yes, given my life’s profession, I’m glad I was pushed into typing classes, even when it interfered with my youth baseball practices.

But I wasn’t typing on this day in question.

NOPE.

We had a plan to go see the San Francisco Giants.

We lived about 15 or 16 miles from Seals Stadium, the Giants’ original home when they moved from New York in 1958.

For the record, I’d say we were JUST about old enough to be pulling this stunt.

Maybe not, but …

We were off, anyway.

There was a local Greyhound bus that went up the Peninsula to the city — via what was called the Mission route.

Even though the trip was almost endless, with stops at nearly every intersection, it really was handy.

The bus eventually stopped at 16th and Mission in San Francisco, and from there it was an easy walk to Seals Stadium at 16th and Bryant.

I always thought it was a shame that Seals Stadium couldn’t be converted to meet big-league standards.

It was a beautiful place, and not only that, you could smell apple turnovers all afternoon — a lovely contribution from Stempel’s bakery, which was a few blocks beyond the left-field bleachers and, better yet, almost always upwind of the stadium.

In case you’re wondering, this was an afternoon game we attended.

It happened to be on a Thursday — July 30, 1959.

AS FOR our Giants leading up to that game, well …

They were just a half-game out of first place, but they’d lost four in a row and weren’t scoring runs.

The offense had fallen into a funk.

As it turned out, the whole organization got a jolt that day.

I wish I could say I guessed it was coming, and picked that afternoon for our bus ride, but …

No, I was blissfully unaware that the Giants had summoned a rookie first baseman from Triple-A Phoenix, and intended to put him in the lineup immediately.

So, I suppose you could call it an accident, the way Willie McCovey became my favorite player.

Favorite …

Ever.

It started with a little buzz of anticipation from the crowd of 10,114, when McCovey was announced as playing first base and batting third — behind Willie Mays and in front of Orlando Cepeda, the 1958 National League Rookie of the Year.

Cepeda was shuffled over to third base in order to get all these bats in the lineup, especially for a team that hadn’t been scoring enough runs.

It’s not like the rookie McCovey got to face some ham-and-egg pitcher for his debut, either.

What he got was the Phillies’ future Hall of Famer Robin Roberts.

Welcome to “The Show.”

MY FIRST impression of McCovey was that he looked immense in the batter’s box.

There actually was a feeling throughout the crowd, like everyone holding their breath at once.

It was the sensation you get when you first see the monster in a horror film.

Like …

“Ooooohhh …”

Other hitters seem right in place taking their swings — even the great Willie Mays — but McCovey was different the moment he stepped in the box.

I know, you’re thinking: “It’s easy for him to say all this now, after McCovey’s 521 career home runs.”

But honestly, I had no clue about any of that on Willie’s first day in majors.

I wasn’t any clever scout.

But I DID think he looked different — he had a presence, and exuded power before he even saw a pitch.

Like Mighty Casey had come to save our scuffling Giants.

I swear, I’ve never seen any other player for the first time, and felt I was seeing something almost otherworldly special.

And for his debut, McCovey was ALL of that.

IN HIS first at-bat against the Hall of Famer Roberts, McCovey ripped a single that sounded like a rifle shot.

Second time up, he hit a bomb that would have left any other park — including Yellowstone.

(I stole that line from Bob Uecker …)

See, Seals Stadium had fairly normal dimensions, with bleachers in right and left field — the seats in left replacing a wall when the Giants arrived — but center field was a different story.

It was a healthy 410 feet from home plate, but there also was a massive scoreboard — 31 feet high and stretching from left-center to right-center.

McCovey put a serious dent in that scoreboard with what turned out to be a triple.

By the way, Willie could really run before problems with his feet and knees hobbled him later in his career.

Since that ball off the scoreboard had shot through the sky like a golfer’s tee shot, we were already stunned by what Willie McCovey could do.

More proof came the third time around, when he hit another single — a line drive that hit the right-field wall so hard that the ricochet kept Willie at first base.

He took care of that in his fourth (and final) at-bat when he laced yet another triple to the gap in left-center.

Four straight hits — every one a bullet — off Robin Roberts.

IT’S FAIR to say we were impressed — well, more like awed — as we babbled about the Giants’ new superhero on the bus ride home.

The coiled-up power, the feeling that the next swing might produce something you’d never seen …

That was Willie McCovey.

Through the years, he hit some of the hardest shots I’ve ever seen, and I’ve covered plenty of the game’s elite hitters.

Many baseball people — players, coaches and executives — swear that McCovey was the most intimidating presence in the batter’s box than they’d ever witnessed.

I saw Willie hit a line drive straight back at the Dodgers’ Don Drysdale, a 6-foot-6 gentleman himself, that knocked the pitcher completely off the back of the mound.

I’ve been lucky enough to watch some fantastic ballplayers, many who were incredibly talented — the best of the best.

But Willie McCovey was magic from that first day.

See?

Sometimes you just have to skip school.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.

Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball, once per month during the offseason.