“Were you a big fan of Dennis Eckersley?”

The Kansas City Royals are playing the Oakland Athletics tonight, a rare instance where baseball brings back honest-to-God memories of my youth. However, it may have more to do with ice cream and design than anything athletic.

Predictably, my girlfriend finds this delightful. I pretend to recognize that big furry caterpillar sitting underneath Mr. Eckersley’s nose, then proudly retort that I was a big Rickey Henderson fan. That’s all I’ve got when it comes to the A’s. Or baseball, for that matter.

I grew up in Kansas, so I should have gravitated toward the Royals. I went to a few games, may have owned a T-shirt, remember my mom’s dad having some sort of affinity for listening to the team on the radio and that was that. I was about to tell you about my signed autograph of Royals pitcher Orel Hershiser, but my memory is apparently a real piece of work and he never played in KC. But I still think I had Hershiser’s autograph, for whatever that’s worth.

I was the proud owner of several baseball hats. They were for fishing and tennis, never for their original purpose. Most of them were A teams – not A teams as in the best, but teams with the letter A as their logo. The California Angels. The Oakland Athletics. It makes sense. A is for Adam.

And that brings us to ice cream. Dairy Queen ingeniously happened upon a promotion in the 1990s that still elicits knowing nods. Ice cream with fudge + baseball + helmet bowls. I did my best to collect them all, including my beloved KC Royals and Oakland A’s.

What I’m trying to say is that I still love baseball ice cream, even to this day.