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. \u201cCaught\u201d is a bit misleading, but let me explain.<\/p>\n
It was a Monday, and like most Mondays one doesn\u2019t expect many memorable things to occur. I was working at the time at a place called Wing Zone, also known as \u201cThe Wing Zone,\u201d also known as that place in North Carolina where Mike worked<\/i>. 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\u2019d planned to do that was to undertake what I called the \u201cNorth Carolina Minor League Baseball Fantasy Tour.\u201d There are probably a hundred minor league stadiums in that part of the world and my goal was to see them all.<\/p>\n
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\u2026they all played in Greensboro. I was in good company.<\/p>\n
Speaking of company, I spent the morning with several thousand school children, as morning start times tend to draw. Who doesn\u2019t love a field trip to the ballpark? I\u2019m sure I was mistaken for either a chaperone or a student several times. No, just some guy at the park.<\/p>\n
I had an aisle seat along the third base side, and I couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I was surrounded.<\/p>\n
There was no child around me\u2026 there were hundreds. Nay, thousands.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
So I sat on the ball, saying nothing. Who picked up the ball?<\/i> I gestured. Where did it go?<\/i> I implied.<\/p>\n
Ha. I sat on the thing for two hours before\u2026 while walking to my car after the game I took out my prize. I examined it. Beautiful.<\/p>\n
OFFICIAL BALL<\/p>\n
SOUTH ATLANTIC LEAGUE<\/p>\n
Classic.<\/p>\n
I wrote on it \u201cGreensboro, N.C., 4\/24\/06\u201d and it has sat on one shelf or another at several different places I\u2019ve lived over the past decade. It\u2019s one of those worthless possessions one treasures nonetheless.<\/p>\n
To think I was going to let some kid have it.<\/p>\n
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 … Continue reading ![\"IMG_1545\"](\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_1545.jpg\")
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