THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: The night a future band director and Post Falls volleyball coach had a front-row seat to history

Every year around Father's Day, video of the event surfaces somewhere.

Same thing around mid-September.

And the memories come flooding back to Matt Barkley.

Folks in North Idaho may know Barkley as a music teacher and former volleyball coach at Post Falls High.

But 30 years ago, growing up in Kent, Wash., he was a batboy for the Seattle Mariners.

And on Sept. 14, 1990, Barkley was in the M's dugout in Anaheim, Calif., when Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey Jr. hit back-to-back home runs against the California Angels — the first time a father and son had ever homered back to back in a major league game.

"It gives me chills just thinking about it," Barkley recalled the other day.

WHEN BARKLEY was 8 years old, he wrote to the Mariners about being a bat boy. Years later, when he was in high school, he decided to try again.

He applied in April 1988. Five months later the M's equipment manager, frustrated by some of the batboys and clubhouse workers not showing up for work, offered Matt a job.

"I got the call-up to the big leagues in September," is how Barkley recalls it.

He was 15, just starting his sophomore year at Kentridge High. He finished the ’88 season with the M's, then worked for them in the 1989 and ’90 seasons.

Barkley and the others rotated between three positions — batboy one day, ballboy the next day, clubhouse worker the next day.

There was the unglamorous duties, like washing the players' clothes, and cleaning the locker rooms, bathrooms and showers.

But there was also the fun stuff, like shagging balls during batting practice.

"Sometimes Harold Reynolds (the former M's second baseman) would say 'Hey, Matt, go play first base for me,'" Barkley recalled. "He'd be doing his infield stuff, and I'd be playing catch with Harold Reynolds. It was kind of surreal."

The kids worked three days on, three days off, and Barkley said he would sometimes come in on his days off, just to help with batting practice.

Pay was $20 per game, and the players nicknamed Barkley "Opie" after a young-ish Ron Howard.

On those days, if he didn't have batboy duties, Barkley would go into the outfield and one of the M's coaches would hit fly balls to him.

Another time, pitcher Erik Hanson parked in the wrong spot near the Kingdome, and got his car towed.

"So I had to take him down to the tow yard in my 1982 Ford Escort to get his car after the game," Barkley said. "He didn't talk too much on the way there because he was so mad."

BARKLEY SAID his favorite job of the three was probably ballboy, because you got to see every pitch of the game.

"I was actually ballboy for Randy Johnson's no-hitter (on June 2, 1990)," Barkley said.

Barkley was tasked with gathering up all the balls that were pitched in that game, and having the Big Unit sign them.

Barkley made sure he kept one of them.

"One of those balls is in the (Baseball) Hall of Fame, so I can say I actually touched a baseball that's in the Hall of Fame," Barkley said.

Sometimes the batboys weren't done with their duties after a game until 1 in the morning. If it was Saturday night, with an afternoon game set for the next day, the kids often stayed at the Kingdome, sleeping on couches in the clubhouse rather than going home and making a quick turnaround.

But that was OK, because they got to go out on the field at the Kingdome and play a little late-late-night baseball — sometimes against the batboys and clubhouse kids from the visiting team.

He remembered the Minnesota Twins batboys in Seattle, showing off their watches from when the Twins won the World Series in 1987.

Sometimes Barkley worked in the visiting clubhouse, where he got to meet the likes of Sparky Anderson, Carlton Fisk and Rickey Henderson.

BATBOYS, BALLBOYS and clubhouse kids didn't often travel with the team. But the Mariners took theirs (maybe 8-10 kids, all told) on one trip in 1990 — to Anaheim, in September.

"Harold Reynolds paid for us to go to Disneyland," Barkley recalled of that trip.

Barkley missed a couple days of a his senior high of high school to make the road trip — but it turned out to be a heckuva excused absence.

On that Friday night at the "Big A," Barkley was one of the batboys, alternating innings with another kid with the job of going out and fetching the bats after each at-bat.

Reynolds drew a walk to lead off the game. Griffey Sr. followed with a home run to center field. Junior then stepped up and homered to left-center.

Barkley and the other batboy were sitting right outside the dugout when the Griffeys went back-to-back.

"You didn't think anything at the time when Senior hit the home run," Barkley recalled. "It was pretty cool. But when Junior hit it, yeah, this is something special. You're part of history right now."

As Junior rounded the bases, Barkley wound up on the top step of the dugout, next to Jay Buhner, and was among those high-fiving Junior when he reached the dugout.

BARKLEY "RETIRED" as a Mariners batboy following the season. It was time for college, at Washington State and Northwest Nazarene in Nampa. He briefly thought about maybe pursuing a career with the M's. But he wanted to become a music teacher, and figured life on the road with a baseball team might not be conducive to raising a family.

Barkley is now in his 24th year as a teacher — his first year was at Lakeland Junior High, and he's been at Post Falls since 1998.

He was band director at the high school for 18 years, and this is his fifth year as elementary music teacher, at Mullan Trail and Seltice.

He gave up the band director job when he took over as head volleyball coach at Post Falls, a post he held for four seasons (2016-19) after five seasons as an assistant.

And when, a couple times a year, those videos pop up of the Griffeys going back to back ...

"It brings back not only that memory, but all the memories of working for the Mariners," Barkley said.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.