Mike O'Connell

Yesterday I celebrated the tenth anniversary of one of the greatest moments of my life. It was April 24, 2006, that I for the first and only time in said life actually caught a foul ball at a professional baseball game. “Caught” is a bit misleading, but let me explain.

It was a Monday, and like most Mondays one doesn’t expect many memorable things to occur. I was working at the time at a place called Wing Zone, also known as “The Wing Zone,” also known as that place in North Carolina where Mike worked. This was the brief period in my life during which I lived and worked in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in fact had only about 10 days left on my stint. I wanted to see all I could in Dixie before I left, and one of the ways I’d planned to do that was to undertake what I called the “North Carolina Minor League Baseball Fantasy Tour.” There are probably a hundred minor league stadiums in that part of the world and my goal was to see them all.

That Monday morning (yes, morning), the Greensboro Grasshoppers were hosting the Hickory Crawdads at 11 a.m. The Grasshoppers are the single-A farm team of the Miami (then Florida) Marlins, and the stadium, First Horizon Park (now called Yadkin Bank Park) was in only its second year of existence. The Grasshoppers had been part of the Marlins franchise since 2003, having previously been affiliated with the New York Yankees (and others). Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, even Don Mattingly going back a bit…they all played in Greensboro. I was in good company.

Speaking of company, I spent the morning with several thousand school children, as morning start times tend to draw. Who doesn’t love a field trip to the ballpark? I’m sure I was mistaken for either a chaperone or a student several times. No, just some guy at the park.

I had an aisle seat along the third base side, and I couldn’t say a thing about the game except that the weather was pleasant and my experience was as well. I would guess maybe the second or third inning provided me with my memorable moment.

A foul pop to left came like the proverbial dying quail towards my section, bouncing weakly before literally rolling my way. Barely moving an inch I picked up the ball at my feet, the ball having passed through several sets of grimy little kid fingers along its way. I put the ball in my pocket and said not a word, made not a commotion.

An unwritten rule of ballparks is that if one is an adult, he must give foul balls to the nearest child, regardless of familiarity or kinship. I would have gladly abided by this code but for one thing.

I was surrounded.

There was no child around me… there were hundreds. Nay, thousands.

What would be a good way for me to make all but one of them hate me? And no doubt any one of them would lose the ball before he or she reached his bus back to school.

So I sat on the ball, saying nothing. Who picked up the ball? I gestured. Where did it go? I implied.

Ha. I sat on the thing for two hours before… while walking to my car after the game I took out my prize. I examined it. Beautiful.

OFFICIAL BALL

SOUTH ATLANTIC LEAGUE

Classic.

I wrote on it “Greensboro, N.C., 4/24/06” and it has sat on one shelf or another at several different places I’ve lived over the past decade. It’s one of those worthless possessions one treasures nonetheless.

To think I was going to let some kid have it.

Tomorrow the Queen of England turns 90 years old. (That’s Elizabeth the Second for those of you who haven’t been paying attention to world affairs the past six decades or so.) I don’t really have much to say about the queen except kudos for continuing to live and for sticking it out with your employers so long.

She is also the second leg of our 90^th birthday watch, and another answer to one of my favorite trivia questions of all time. Name four celebrities, all born in 1926 and all still going strong, that have been at their current jobs (more or less) waaaay longer than anyone ever thought they would ever be.

Answer number one: Hugh Hefner. Answer number two: Elizabeth II. Answers three and four? Hint: check this blog in August.

Then, realize the first leg of the Spring 2016 Trifecta has already occurred.

Things to add:

Kobe scoring 60 (in typical Kobe fashion) in his final game. Classic.

Bryce Harper’s 100th career home run… a grand slam, no doubt.

And, also locally… Caps win, Caps win.

Then, tonight:

Bumgarner-Kershaw for the second time already this season and Greinke-Shields in San Diego. Way to go, West Coast late games, way to go.

And in the heartland? A guy starting for the defending NL champions who’s about to turn 43 and looks more like a truck driver than an athlete?

Awesome.

This weekend I visited my hometown of Binghamton, New York. And yeah, it snowed the whole weekend.

Most people, I suppose, have love-hate relationships with their hometowns and I have a particularly strong one. I can handle it, though, for 36 hours a year, as long as I avoid everyone but the handful of people I really look forward to seeing.

Same time next year, Binghamton.

Residents: We are not amused. What a great headline. Seriously.

You may recall a couple months ago I told you about Loudoun County’s “Nighttime Economy Ad Hoc Committee.” That’s an ad hoc committee of the Loudoun Economic Development Advisory Commission. (What was the fake charity George Costanza invented on an episode of Seinfeld? The Human Fund? “Money for people.”) Well, that committee has, according to The Washiington Post, “been looking at ways of stimulating [sic] the nighttime economy to make Loudoun more attractive to business and the young workers they employ.”

The thing about socialism is that it requires too many evenings.

On Monday, March 14 (sorry… news travels slowly without a media committee), about 75 people who couldn’t find something real to do with their evening time “turned out to provide comments in small groups that corresponded to seven subcommittees that studied entertainment, public space and amenities, housing, transportation, public safety, compliance with government regulations and economic development.” Again, thanks, Washington Post. I don’t even have to come up with material anymore. I just reprint their news articles. What was it Will Rogers said? “I don’t make jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts.” Amen, brother.

Members of various Loudoun County committees and subcommittees presented plans and ideas bent on, you know, attracting some excitement to the richest county in America. Because…

“There’s nothing for me here.”

Ha! Classic Binghamton. Nothing to do here.

Terri Randolph of Leesburg says she often goes to the District for entertainment. She would like to see “more restaurants, more lounges, more places where you have live music, more places where it’s a little bit more diverse.”

O Government, Government, maketh me the entertainment!

And “places where it’s a little bit more diverse”? Seriously, what is that? Is that a grammar mistake or a hillbilly joke?

Todd Pearson, one of two co-chairmen of the Nighttime Economy Ad Hoc Committee, said the committee received almost 1,000 responses to an online survey to solicit public input on the matter. The committee “will revise (its) recommendations” (HA!), then present them to the Economic Development Advisory Commission in May, followed by a presentation to the Board of Supervisors’ finance committee in June.

I say more leprechauns, more unicorns, more magic beans, more bread and circuses!

And they say there’s nothing amusing in Loudoun County.