Ever want to kick yourself for having been present for the emergence of a legend and realizing later you were too young and dumb to appreciate it?

That’s how it went for baseballer Ted Williams and me back in 1938, 64 years ago! Teddy Ballgame was playing for the Minneapolis Millers, a Boston Red Sox farm team. He would come to Kansas City to play against my beloved Blues. A wide-eyed 13-year-old could get into KC’s 22nd and Brooklyn Stadium for a mere 25 cents on Knothole Gang days.

Thing is, the Millers also had a guy named Ab Wright who had become the designated villain for KC fans. Ab got a lot of attention because he found so many ways to torment the Blues. Me, I was so naive it didn’t dawn on me to dote on a San Diego kid who batted .336, smacked 43 homers and batted in 142 runs for the ’38 Millers. A triple-crown winner, yet. But he was just a kid, only seven years older than I was. How could he be an icon?

I should have been soaking up everything Williams did, but it was more fun to grump and grouse about Wright and the rest of the scurrilous Millers who made it so hard for KC to win American Association pennants.

Williams moved up to the Red Sox for the 1939 season; all he did as a rookie was bat .327, rap 31 homers and knock in 145 runs. THEN I began to follow him more closely. Heck, as young as he was, I might even have gained his autograph during one of those unguarded moments in 1938, before Ted became so reclusive and became so displeased with the media mainly newspaper guys then.

It’s because of guys like Williams that I improved my reading, snarfing up everything I could find about him and Joe DiMaggio, particularly during that wonderful .406 season for Teddy and 56-game hitting streak for Joltin’ Joe. I heard Teddy hit that All-Star Game-winning homer on radio and busted a gut to see it in movie newsreels.

Television? You’re kidding, right?

What a bargain! The Red Sox bought Teddy’s contract in 1937 from the San Diego Padres for $25,000 and four players. That December he signed a two-year contract, $3,000 one year, $4,500 the next. He was such a purist that in 1960 he personally cut his salary from $125,000 to $90,000 because he didn’t meet his own merciless expectations. He had another .300-plus batting season and retired at the end of the ’60 campaign.

Maybe other baseballers have done that, but the only other superstar I know about was pitcher Bob Feller of Cleveland, who mandated a $10,000 cut one season when he won only about 15 games. Anybody done that lately, even the real rag-arms and pussycat banjo hitters?

Feller, like Williams, was a staunch patriot. Bob enlisted for four years in the Navy in World War II. Williams became a Marine fighter pilot for three years in WWII, then two more for Korea. Anybody who knows anything about it will tell you that getting to be a Marine flyer is a terrific feat. They don’t tinker with guys just because they can hit a baseball. They get those wings the old-fashioned way they earn the hell out of ’em.

But my interest in the Williamses and DiMaggios in 1939 was diluted by my zeal for the KC Blues. At 107-47 they were later voted the No. 1 minor league team of all time. Another DiMaggio, Joe’s older brother Vince, was among the Kansas City stars, running up a terrific home run total before being called up to Cincinnati at the tag end of the season.

Vince spent 10 years in The Show with Boston (NL), Cincy, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and the New York Giants, with 1946 his finale.

Really great baseball analysts like Lawrence’s incomparable Bill James may not agree; I contend that ’39 Blues team was better than all but one or two of all the major league teams Kansas City has since put on the field.

Among the eventual big league performers were Phil Rizzuto, Gerry Priddy, Billy Hitchcock, Vince DiMaggio, catchers Johnny Riddle and Clyde McCullough, pitcher/outfielder Johnny Lindell, Ernie Bonham, Marv Breuer, Bud Metheny and I know I’ve missed a few.

One of my favorites was Stanley “Frenchy” Bordagary, a speedy, base-running nut. Further, I liked him because I learned to spell his name, pretty tough for this junior high school struggler.

Then never overlook the role radio announcer Walt Lochmann had in glamorizing the Blues in the late 1930s and ’40s. Many folks rhapsodize about how they grew up baseball fans because of St. Louis’s Harry Caray and Jack Buck. Man, nobody ever made me love baseball more than Lochmann. I’d sneakily listen to his “leased wire” road games on my tiny, low-volume Emersonette radio even though the folks had mandated curfew. Old Walt was great with live broadcasts, but even better when he sat in the studio, got telegraphic data about a road game and embellished it so delightfully. Some of that banter may even have been true. Didn’t care as long as the Blues were involved, particularly if they won.

The American Association about that time also turned out future biggies like PeeWee Reese. Ted Williams was probably the No. 1 product from that venue, but a number of other Hall of Famers also blossomed despite the wartime sojourn that shortened so many careers.

Yep, too dumb to recognize Teddy Ballgame as a surefire legend. But fortunate enough to have seen him then along with so many other brilliant baseballers. So much has changed, too much of it for the worse.

You’ve probably heard these politically incorrect collegiate zingers, but:

How many Mizzou freshmen does it take to change a light bulb? None. That’s a sophomore course.

How many Kansas State football players will coach Bill Snyder dress for the 2002 Kansas game? Eleven the rest of the squad can dress themselves.

Then there’s this one to unite all us Big Eight faithful:

Why did Texas choose orange as its school color? You can wear it for a game Saturday, hunting on Sunday and picking up trash along the highway the rest of the week.