How lucky I was to see Willie McCovey hit a home run in the first Major League game I attended (if you're curious, he smoked it off Pirates left-hander Bob Veale in the fifth inning on May 24, 1969 at Candlestick Park). How incredibly fortunate I am to have covered baseball for most of the last three decades, a journey which led me back to the team I embraced as a youth, thus enabling me to meet McCovey and conduct multiple pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming interviews with him.